Local activists petition province to open community gardens

By Courtney Bachar/The Oshawa Express

Gardeners who rely on community gardens for food for their families are worried about what’s going to happen this season if the gardens remain closed.

The gardens were deemed non-essential by the province due to the Coronavirus and currently cannot open for the season.

Originally, we thought it was an essential service, like food production,” says Mary Drummond, president of Durham Integrated Grower for a Sustainable Community (DIG), adding community gardens were cut from the list when the government cut the number of essential services in mid-April.

Dig represents about 30 community gardens within Durham Region, several of which are in Oshawa.

Maureen Whalen, coordinator of Mary Street Community Garden in Oshawa, says there are many gardeners who use and rely on the gardens for food for their families and are worried about what this closure could mean for the season.

“If this season wasn’t to happen, it would cause a lot of problems food-wise,” says Whalen. “We’re in a low-income area and we have a lot of people from this area. We have seniors, we have people with disabilities, so we have a variety of people who really depend on this garden food for their families.”

DIG, along with Ontario Community Growers Network, have partnered with Sustain Ontario, a province-wide alliance that promotes healthy food and farming, to provide the province with an open letter outlining safety protocols that would be put in place so that the community gardens can be open.

Drummond says everyone’s health and safety is the primary concern.

“We want to find some way that everyone feels comfortable with opening these very essential places, and also to hopefully understand that we want everyone safe as well.” She says.

The letter, which will be sent to Premier Doug Ford, the chief medical officer and other members of parliament, is calling on the province to identify community gardens as an essential food service.

“Tens of thousands of families rely on community gardens to produce food for their families each year,” the letter reads. “There has been a marked increase in demand for this service since the beginning of COVID-19 across Ontario. People throughout the province have already invested in their seeds, and started seedlings, for this growing season.”

Not only do a lot of these gardeners grow crops for their own families, but some community gardens, such as the Whitby-Ajax Garden Project, grow crops to donate the local food banks and other organizations.

Ruth Latimer, who has been involved with community gardens for about 15 years, both at Mary Street Community Garden and now with the Whitby-Ajax Garden Project, says they grow a low of food for food banks.

“The need this year is going to be even greater for that sort of thing. It’s not just a few carrots here and there,” says Latimer, adding they donate anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 pounds of food each year.

“There’s a lot of volunteer work that goes into that and it’s going to be missed if it can’t be done.”

Drummond echoes the hard work and dedication of the members in the community gardens.

“This is important for our gardens in Durham Region because many of them are in priority neighbourhoods or on the border, and some produce vegetables that go to food banks. There are increasingly more and more people in need because of loss of jobs, and we’re all much more vulnerable,” she says, adding they know as gardeners that every time there’s a recession, there is an increase in the number of people on their waitlist and an increase in the number of plants being bought at nurseries, which Drummond notes can’t be done right now due to the pandemic.

“And certainly, many people just come to community gardens because they want the fresh produce to help them stretch their food budget,” she adds.

Drummond says she hopes the letter to the province will spark a conversation about safety measures and protocols that can be put in place that will help make community gardens an essential service.

“We want to find some way that everyone feels comfortable with opening these very essential pieces, and also to hopefully understand that we want everyone safe as well,” says Drummond. “Of course, everyone’s health is primary so we want to do it in a safe way and in conjunction with what [the province] feels is good as well.”