Different community gardens in Waterloo region have different rules. Here's what you need to know

Community gardens are planting a seed of hope for many people who don't have space to grow their own food or those who are facing food insecurity.

Doug Jones, chair of the Waterloo Region Community Garden Network, says his organization oversees more than 80 community gardens in the region.

"Food insecurity looks like something much more simple than we imagine. It means I have to buy my food. That's when we start to feel insecure," Jones said, adding his community gardens help to combat food insecurity "by allowing people to grow the food they want, the way they want to."

He added, "People pay to be here. They pay for their inputs and their supplies."

Many of those using the community gardens are "underemployed," not working enough hours to be able to pay for their needs, Jones said. To help fight food insecurity, Jones said they can use the gardens in their extra time to produce their own food.

Petersburg Community Garden is a 10-acre plot under contract by the network and the largest of the community gardens available in the Waterloo region. There, families, chefs, and community organizations can rent plots of land to grow their own food.

"People are coming here because they want to feed themselves," Jones said.

'Take from the garden'

The popularity of community gardens has been growing in recent years, spurred on partially during the pandemic when many people focused on growing their own food and taking up hobbies like gardening. But each community garden around Waterloo region has its own rules about who grows fruit, vegetables and herbs and who is allowed to take from those garden plots.

In the front lawn of a Cambridge church, though, there's a garden where anyone can take what they need — it's free for everyone. 

Heide Emrich started the small community garden in front of St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church after she got the idea after seeing a similar garden in the front yard of a house in Stratford, Ont.

"Anybody who feels the need to, and is hungry … please, take from the garden," she said.

She said the Stratford garden had "all sorts of little signs that said 'help yourself' and I thought, 'hey, that's something we can do at our church.'"

The crops Emrich has grown in the garden reflect the insecurity that unhoused people face in her area.

"We purposely chose vegetables that were edible without having to cook, so that people could just go and take and actually bite in and eat right away," she said.

Emrich says the garden has received a lot of attention from families and individuals who often sit on the church's front steps or picnic table and go over to take a vegetable for a snack.

"When you see that it's being used or you see that vegetables are being taken, then you know that it's helping somebody," she said. "Any overflow that we have that needs to be picked right away, if it's not taken, we actually take it to the food bank."

Community connections

The community garden on Wilfrid Laurier University's campus is used a bit differently. Community groups and on-campus organizations use the 1,300-square-meter facility to grow food for their communities.

Organizations that use the Northdale Community Garden include Young City Growers, Patchwork Community Gardens, KW Urban Harvester, and a variety of Laurier stakeholder groups.

Eric Meliton is the manager of the sustainability office at Wilfrid Laurier University and helps to organize and run the garden.

"At Laurier itself, we know there's probably about 2,000 to 3,000 students every fall-winter that actually need some sort of assistance in terms of food insecurity," he said. "That number is probably going up."

The sustainability office partners with the different organizations at the Northdale Community Garden to purchase the surplus food they produce, Meliton said.

"Our goal at the sustainability office is to buy the volume that's surplus here, donate it to the food insecurity groups that are on campus … that way it goes to anybody that does need it."

Oliver Manidoka is a student at Laurier and is also the Indigenous food sovereignty agent for the university's Indigenous Student Centre. He runs four plots at the garden.

Manidoka said that connecting with the community at Northdale has been instrumental in his agricultural learning. 

"There tends to be a lot of other gardeners just kind of hanging out, doing their thing, and they really are not afraid to offer advice or answer questions," he said.

"There's mutual respect and an understanding of the things that you're doing together. You're growing food."

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