“The Good Earth” - British Columbia Magazine

City Farmer head gardener, Sharon Slack, in British Columbia Magazine, “The Good Earth”, 2008 (spring issue)

” … Sharon Slack maintains an incredible garden in her Dunbar district backyard. The earth, she says, is in her bones. Around her on this warm June day – squeezed onto her residential lot – are at least 100 species of flowers, five dwarf apple trees, a pond and bog garden, a patch of half-metre-high garlic plants, rows of salad greens and beans, potted herbs, two dozen blueberry bushes, a greenhouse full of tomatoes, more than two dozen bee boxes, and two well-tended composters. There are basketball-sized cabbages growing on her carport roof.

“I could take my knife and fork out here and eat,” she says, surveying her garden. “The vegetables would be gone so fast they wouldn’t even know they’d been eaten!” A vegetarian, she estimates that 5 to 10 percent of her food comes out of this backyard.

She’s well aware – in her capacity as head gardener at Vancouver’s City Farmer Garden – that she’s part of a societal shift toward organic urban farming. There are, in fact, more than 50 public community gardens across Greater Vancouver. Some have waiting lists that are years long.

Slack meets many city dwellers who yearn to feel the earth and grow a bit of their own food. Gardening has become an antidote to the fast-paced and artificial aspects of city life. But she also believes that most urban people have little sense of how closely their existence is tied to the soil. … ”

This issue of BC Magazine is available in stores or from their web site here.