Seeds Of Progress

The Goldstream Gazette
Friday, August 13, 2004
By Jennifer Smith
Original URL: http://www.goldstreamgazette.com/

Community Gardeners Need More Green

The Seeds of Progress sweet peas are looking for a sugar daddy.

Seeds of Progress is a community garden project that supplies 2,500 pounds of organic produce to the food bank while teaching its garden volunteers how to grow produce for their families.

"We operate on a budget of around $5,000 a year, which is too small," said Jackie Robson, garden co-ordinator. "The problem is, in addition to doing all of this work, we are having to do all our own fundraising."

And it's sucking the life from their overflowing garden.

From plant sales to lectures at local clubs, an abundance of Robson's time is spent ensuring the project has the funds to sustain itself instead of growing vegetables, flowers, and all the things that make the garden haven unique.

"This is more than just a vegetable garden. It's meant to be a place where people can come and contemplate and it always has been," she said.

From artwork to poetry, a walk through their botanical wonderland may relax you, but it will also challenge your tastebuds.

The mild tasting beet berries and spinachy flavour of the magenta sprean are no match for the spicy nasturtiums, and the garden holds enough edible flowers to make the volunteers lunch look more like a bouquet than a meal.

"It's for our own fun and also to increase the diversity - get away from the monoculture," said Robson.

When it began in 1997, the program was for those on income assistance. It's now open to all interested residents, attracting gardeners from a variety of walks of life.

"We save buckets of money," said Betty Taylor, a longtime volunteer who takes what she's learned home to her rented suite where she will plant beds of her own next year.

"We know that (our food) is chemical free, we know that it really is organic, we don't have to guess, and we know how to provide for ourselves," she added.

And that security goes for the donated food as well.

"We're happy with anything we get from them," said Gale Ireland president of the Western Community Food Bank.

"Our numbers are slightly down in the summer. Just like a hundred people, it's really here nor there," she said. "(But) donations dry up in the summer."

They are surviving off donations of dented and damaged non-perishables from Thrifties and the Superstore, but the fresh produce is a welcome treat.

"We ask for plain vegetables that our clients can use in their everyday cooking- things like peas, carrots, beans and squash," she said.

And Robson has complied. The food production aspect of the garden is very important.

"It looks like we're just producing vegetables, but we're actually doing what I would consider a radical thing," said Robson.

"Fifty years ago this island provided 85 per cent of its own food and now it's only 10 per cent," she said. "It's hard on the environment, wastes fossil fuels, (and) it's not a sustainable system."

But for most volunteers, the garden is just a wonderful way to spend the day.

"I've always gardened and I had an allotment in England until I came back a few years ago," said Maris Ratel, one of the garden's new green thumbs.

Her allotment was in a large community garden in England, and she has slipped right back into the routine.

The garden is on the corner of Painter and Metchosin roads, and is regularly tended from April through October. Anyone interested in donating can contact Seeds of Progress through Westshore Community Resources at 478-1122.