Photo caption: Environmental activist Karen Wristen (front) and City Farmers Sharon Slack (left), Carole Christopher (back) and Michael Levenston stand in the City Hall plot that will be reserved for a community garden to grow food.
Photo by Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun

By Doug Ward
The Vancouver Sun
7 Mar 2009

Plot set aside for community garden

Barack Obama’s got nothing on Gregor Robertson when it comes to having green cred with the local food movement.

Organic food activists in the United States have been urging the new president to install a community garden at the White House.

A few days ago, Vancouver’s new mayor announced that a portion of the city hall lawn, just north of the main city hall building, will be converted into a community garden for people to grow food.

“Vancouver has really beat Obama on this one,” said Mike Levenston, executive director of the City Farmer Society.

The idea of bringing agriculture to 12th and Cambie comes from Robertson’s Greenest City Action Team, which has been charged with making Vancouver the greenest city in the world.

“If we want Vancouver to be a truly sustainable city, City Hall needs to lead the way,” said Robertson.

It’s not a total surprise that Vancouver would be one of the first — if only — large North American cities to have a community garden at its city hall. The city that’s home to the authors of the 100 Mile Diet is a hotbed of community gardening.

“The demand for community gardens here is huge,” said Karen Wristen of the Society Promoting Environmental Conservation, who will be designing the city hall garden.

City of Vancouver food policy coordinator Devorah Kahn said the concept of community gardens goes back to at least the Second World War when people were encouraged to grow food along the Arbutus Corridor.

The recent surge in the popularity of urban agriculture was caused partly by the city’s densification, she added. “When people don’t have their own private area to grow food, they look for spaces where gardening can happen.”

Kahn said that the grow-local movement appeals to people who want organic, pesticide-free food or are looking for a way to save money in tough economic times.

“People can grow what they want to eat and have it available even when their financial resources are stretched.”

Support for community gardens at city hall crosses party lines. The previous Non-Partisan Association-dominated council committed the city to creating 2,010 new garden plots by 2010 as an Olympic legacy.

Kahn said that 1,620 new plots have been created since that policy was passed in 2006. “So we are on the road of getting to our goal.”

City Farmer Society’s Levenston said that city hall’s promotion of community gardening in recent years means fewer people are engaging in “guerrilla gardening” by growing food on vacant lots.

“I don’t hear a lot about guerrilla gardening anymore. I just hear about the desire for more community garden space,” said Levenston, who runs a demonstration garden in Kitsilano.

The demand for community gardens has prompted some downtown developers to install temporary gardens on land left vacant until the market rebounds.

The Onni Group of Companies, for example, has set up gardens on its property at the corner of Pacific Avenue and Seymour Street.

Onni spokesman Mike Clark said there was a long waiting list of people who wanted access to the plots. Many of the people who live in downtown Vancouver’s “concrete jungle” once had a backyard and want the ability to garden again, he added.

Onni now plans to include a rooftop garden on the condo development that will be eventually erected on the site, said Clark.

The developer’s interest in community gardens extends beyond providing a public amenity. By turning the land over to gardeners, Onni was able to get the land reclassified by the B.C. Assessment Authority from Class 6, which is business or commercial, to Class 8, which is recreational or non-profit.

This amounted to a cut in property tax for Onni on that site of about 70 per cent, said Onni tax specialist Paul Sullivan.

Vision Vancouver councillor Andrea Reimer, a former community gardener who now grows food in her backyard, is happy that developers are allowing vacant land to be turned into public gardens.

Nevertheless, she added, the amount of property tax money being lost through reclassification could fund even more garden plots that would be permanent.

Tax expert Sullivan bristles at suggestions that developers like Onni are unfairly shifting the tax burden onto other commercial properties.

Sullivan said the property tax dollars being lost by turning vacant land into gardens are “insignificant” when compared to the property taxes lost every year in Vancouver when commercial properties convert to residential uses.

“Onni is providing a city amenity at no cost to the city,” said Sullivan.

“What’s the alternative? Putting up a fence and letting people throw garbage on the site as it sits fallow?”

Link to the Vancouver Sun article here.

Vancouver Sun cartoon. March 11, 2009

Update June 2009

City Hall garden construction in progress. (Note: 30 second ad at the beginning of this video.)