Guerrilla gardening transforms a vacant lot in Montreal

The garden today. Emily Wilkinson and Torsten Hermann played a key role in transforming the vacant lot into a community garden. Gazette photo: Bryanna Bradley

I am just trying to give something back
 
By Michelle Lalonde
Montreal Gazette
Aug. 10 2010

Excerpt:

During the past three summers, residents of a certain block of Delinelle St. in St. Henri have watched, first with skepticism, then wonder, as Torsten Hermann, Emily Wilkinson and friends have transformed a garbage-strewn vacant lot into a pretty little park and garden full of flowering plants, edible herbs, berries and vegetables.

The lot doesn’t belong to Hermann or Wilkinson, or any of the other so-called “guerrilla gardeners” who decided to get together and tend to this abandoned urban space. But the lot has been vacant for about 18 years, by Hermann’s calculation, ever since a fire burned down two row houses at the spot.

For years, the lot was overgrown with brambles and nettles, and treated as a garbage dump by passersby. The owner would send cleanup crews from time to time to hack down some of the growth, but the lot would soon return to its sordid state.

Hermann, who lives a couple of houses north of the lot, walked past this depressing sight every day for years.

Then three years ago, while recovering from a difficult period in his life, he decided he needed a new project to lift his spirits. He was already an avid gardener, but his own backyard plot wasn’t enough of a challenge. So Hermann started chatting with his neighbours about transforming the lot into a kind of community garden and gathering place.

Wilkinson, who lived nearby and shared Hermann’s passion for plants, was on board from the beginning.

The first thing they did was hack down the brambles, yank up the ragweed and bag the garbage and dog poo, of which there was an impressive amount. Then Hermann put up a little country fence made of tree branches.

“When I was putting up that fence, everybody just looked at me like I was some kind of tripping hippie,” he says.

Some of his neighbours told him it would never work, that people would trample the fence and keep dumping garbage and steal the plants. But others loved the idea and got involved. They sectioned off some of the space for personal garden plots, where 10 different neighbours are now growing tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries, beans and lettuce.

Read the complete article here.