Photo by ARLEN REDEKOP — The Province. James Oickle was attracted to the Hastings Folk Garden near Columbia Street. “I didn’t think I had a healing process I needed, but it did become that,’ he says.

Garden gets green thumbs up – Passers-by call out, ‘Good job!’ says its creator

BY ELAINE O’CONNOR
The Province
3 Nov 2009

It’s not hard to turn urban wasteland into urban farmland. You just have to plant the seed. PHS Community Services Society’s Peter LaGrand planted that seed in late 2007 when he had the idea of turning an abandoned lot owned by Concord Pacific into a vegetable garden for the residents of the Downtown Eastside.

Since then, the Hastings Folk Garden on Hastings Street near Columbia has grown into a gathering space for green thumbs.

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