Growing communities through gardening

Scattered around Montreal, there are inconspicuous plots of land, which serve as the planting grounds for community, connection with nature, and everything in between. 

Community gardens are designated spaces where members are responsible for cultivating, maintaining, and harvesting their own plots. These gardens are spread throughout the city, but their locations reveal an uneven distribution across boroughs, reflecting the specific needs and priorities of residents within each community. 

Mapping these gardens allows for a broader understanding of how invested each borough is in community gardens and the demographic factors that may influence these patterns.

According to data from the City of Montreal, there are 108 registered community gardens on the island. Boroughs like Ville-Marie and Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve contain the most, with 14 gardens each, while some boroughs have fewer than 5 gardens.

Helena Arroyo has been the coordinator of the community garden program for the Mercier-Hochlaga-Maisonneuve area for three summers. Having started university in biology, finishing in geography, Arroyo says she has always had “a passion for all things nature, plants, animals, and environment.”

According to Arroyo, community gardens are not only an opportunity for residents to have at least one activity related to nature in a city, but are also a source of locally grown fresh food. 

“You can have food, which is a big point now that everything is getting so expensive,” says Arroyo. 

However, being part of a community garden requires a significant time commitment. Gardeners may need to visit their plots several times a day, which is not always easy to manage alongside other priorities. Arroyo explains that, as a result, many community gardeners are retired.

In addition to being time-consuming, obtaining a community garden plot can be difficult. Many gardens have waiting lists, and depending on the location, it can take years to be assigned a plot. Gardens are usually managed by an elected committee, which collects funds for various collective projects. This means that holding a garden plot involves not only individual effort and expenses but also a shared investment in the community.

There are also what Arroyo calls the “biological problems;” all types of insects, disease, problems with the soil, and climate variations. 

“You have to learn about each plant, what they need, and what's happening,” says Arroyo. 

Community gardens across the island are shaped by both the people who use them and the spaces available in each borough. While the total number of gardens in a neighbourhood can suggest how accessible they are, the narrative changes when population size is taken into account.

Although Anjou has only seven community gardens, its smaller population of about 44,800 residents gives residents greater access to gardens per capita than many larger boroughs, with 15.6 gardens per 100,000 residents. By comparison, Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, the city’s second most populated borough, has just 9.1 gardens per 100,000 residents, despite having the most gardens in total.

Jonathan De Luca, a gardener at the Villeray community garden and a Montreal podcaster, suggests that boroughs with fewer community gardens often reflect a population that has greater access to private green spaces, such as personal yards.

“In LaSalle and in Dorval, people have more access to their own green space, like their own lawns,” says De Luca.
However, the uneven distribution of gardens may not reflect demand alone. It can also be shaped by where land is available. According to De Luca, the city is generally not inclined to purchase land specifically to create community gardens, but will often convert underused spaces when the land becomes available.

“They will gladly convert some sub- optimal land into a community garden because it's not necessarily a cost for them” he says.

De Luca co-hosts the “Plant Sluts” podcast with a friend from high school, a project that began as a “lighthearted kind of garden and plant-centric podcast.” 

Wanting to become more involved at the community level, joining a community garden only made sense.

“There's people from different socioeconomic areas and cultures, and there's older people that I interact with that I wouldn't otherwise interact with outside of that context,” says De Luca. 

The gardens are not only a space to connect with individuals that share similar interests but also a space to learn, make comments and ask questions about each other's vegetables and methods of gardening. 

“I might ask someone, you know, like, what did they do to their carrots that they're so great,” says De Luca. 

Still, De Luca says the experience has been “a bit mixed.” Community gardens are typically run by elected councils that oversee rules and collective decisions,  and, according to De Luca, they have been around for a long time. After attending several meetings, he says some younger members have expressed frustration with how decisions are made.
“It’s run a little bit old school,” says De Luca.

“I can see that people are trying to push for more innovative ways of managing [the gardens], but those ideas are not always welcomed.”

Community gardens in Montreal are very important to hundreds of people. Serving as grounds for community and growth, the involved members in each borough remain appreciative and proactive when it comes to improving and expanding each garden's impact.