Historic community garden in line for city protection in Calgary, Alberta

Kim Guttormson, Calgary Herald
September 18, 2008

Marshall Libicz stands in the garden plot he’s worked on and off for more than 70 years, strawberries, zucchini, parsnip and beets at his feet.

“It’s got a history,” the 85-year-old says of the 825 square-metre lot where residents of Bridgeland/Riverside have grown food since the 1920s. “We thought we were going to lose it.”

Wednesday, the city’s land use, planning and transportation committee voted to designate the plot a municipal historic resource.

Libicz and Mike Ricketts mobilized the community association to try to save the garden when it appeared the city had plans to sell the land.

“It’s an historic garden and we’ve kept working it the way it was,” said Ricketts, who started growing corn and other vegetables on a quarter of the lot a few years ago, after “apprenticing” under Libicz.

He adds that given Libicz’s tenure, he has been able to provide a living history of how the land’s been used over the past 70 or so years.

While most community gardens offer small plots about one metre across, the Bridgeland/Riverside garden is four long sections, shared by about 12 people. The original garden started in vacant lots behind three houses along McDougall Road N.E.

A report to the committee said the land had been purchased by the city in 1922 and used as part of the Vacant Lots Garden Club. Residents were allowed to use the vacant lots for a small fee, both beautifying the neighbourhoods and providing a food supply.

Most produce in the city at the time, according to the report, was shipped in from B.C. and was expensive and not very good quality.

The city originally had more than 3,000 lots as part of its vacant lots club — only the three in Bridgeland/Riverside remain, the report noted.

Libicz said his parents, whose home he still lives in on McDougall Road, started gardening there in the 1930s, as did he.

With plans to designate the site, which still must be approved by council, the city began helping with watering this summer, bringing a truck by when Mother Nature didn’t co-operate.

The garden, which has two composts going, also uses rain run-off from the homes that back onto it.

Link to article.

Publisher: New Village Press
(January 1, 2008) 376 pages

Places of peace
Gardens of green
Standing together, we’re growing
Visions of wholeness coming.

Friendship can be a reality
Harmony can be for you and me, Oh!

Places of peace
Gardens of green
Standing together, we’re growing.

Building Commons and Community documents 45 years of the late Karl Linn’s legacy creating neighborhood spaces for communities and by communities. Projects include community gardens, playgrounds, parks and other gathering places built on derelict or unused property by the people who use them.

Landscape architect and child psychologist Karl Linn (1923-2005) was a beloved, down-to-earth, visionary leader of grassroots community building, who brought life to economically disenfranchised neighborhoods in cities from Boston to Berkeley. His book documents the creativity and ingenuity of working-class citizens, students and volunteer professionals who transformed derelict vacant lots and drab institutional settings into colorful and lively community commons in Boston, New York, Newark, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Louisville KY, Pittsburgh, Columbus OH, Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco and Berkeley.

Link to ‘Building Commons and Community’.

Link to Karl Linn website.

Karl Linn’s Berkeley Community Gardens.

Interview with Karl Linn – Community Gardens: Reclaiming a Commons

Click on this link to see videos. They are well produced and over 9 minutes each.

Glover Park Community Garden in Northwest Washington.

Mixing articles, photos and videos has caught on with the mainstream print media. This excellent series began April 17 and has reached Episode Three. (I just object to the ads at the beginning of the videos.)

And here are the articles:

Following a Growing Drama, With Many Plots
By Adrian Higgins
Thursday, April 17, 2008

Harvesting Food And Knowledge
By Adrian Higgins
Thursday, June 26, 2008

“São Paulo, the capital city of the state of São Paulo (Brazil) and its metropolitan region are home to the world’s third largest urban population, with 19,385,332 inhabitants, only trailing behind Tokyo and Mexico City.”

“The area where our project holds a regularized, 100,000-square-meter (10 sq. ha.) arable plot – technically fit for the production of vegetables, greens, grains, fruit and medicinal herbs – is delimited by the districts of Terceira Divisão, Bandeirantes, Jardim Laranjeiras, Recanto and Pernambuco, whose population is formed mostly of migrants from Brazil’s poorer northeastern states in search of job opportunity and better living conditions.”

“This project targets the utilization of unused public or private urban land on which vegetable and fruit gardens are implemented by a local population, with a view to providing destitute communities with work opportunities, professional capacity building and income generation through the selling of the produce harvested. Additionally, it aims at combating malnutrition and improving the quality of life of such communities through their access to healthy and nutritional foods, in addition to promoting the communities’ environmental improvement.”

See the complete Brazil project proposal here. (2842 .DOC)

JTR_0280.JPG, originally uploaded by eamesd.

“In Basel, Switzerland, the metro area – this magic jewel of small farms and gardens — livestock even!”

Link to larger photo.