Last Ditch

I was visiting a small, charming community garden along False Creek the other day with a friend and something struck me. A family entered with their child and we all immediately turned to how to maintain enough distance between us. We looked around awkwardly and then all shifted accordingly so that we each stayed on a side of a raised garden bed.

It got me to thinking: could community gardens be the answer to two problems? On the one hand, we are all feeling very isolated and removed from our communities. And simultaneously we are being asked to continue physical distancing for the foreseeable future. We have seen there are some ways where small groups of people can gather safely without a serious risk of infection- and those mostly include outdoor spaces.

Adding community gardens to neighbourhoods would encourage community and connection while also maintaining wide margins between people. There’s really not too many shared touch points in a community garden beyond benches but individuals and families could set up their own benches, like what folks had along the once backlot gardens of the train tracks.

I’m going to look more into the process for starting community gardens but I think there’s lots of ways “dead spaces” in neighbourhoods could be relatively easily reclaimed and turned into community garden plots. Even the small (but growing) container garden we have on the back stoop of our apartment has become a gathering space of sorts. With possible impending quarantine measures in the future, it’s long past time to start to build infrastructure that allows people to socialize and also stay safe.