community garden
at city hall, vancouver
Yardworks donated Rainforest premium garden soil to this community garden at City Hall.
There are 30 plots in the community garden, which is one of some 45 community gardens across the city.
Each gardener has to pay a small fee to lease the plot from the city, but they can grow vegetables — often within walking distance of their own house.
Some of these new community gardens have been created with a mixture of new policies and tax breaks that have turned otherwise stalled development sites into farmland.
The urban agriculture movement began right here in a Vancouver garden 30 years ago, when people including Michael Levenston had the idea that people could reconnect with their food by growing it themselves.
Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson said the decision to convert part of the park north of city hall into fertile ground would stand as a symbol for Vancouverites to grow their own food.
“Community gardens are a big part of being a green city,” said Robertson. “We need to grow more food locally, because it will help with food security.”
“There are so many reasons to look into growing your own food,” he said, adding that the move at city hall and around the world “really validates what we have worked so hard for.”
http://www.cityfarmer.info/2009/06/21/ctv-news-mayor-of-vancouver-opens-city-hall-community-garden/
