Sowing the seeds of social satisfaction

English physician Thomas Fuller once wrote, “Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there.”

Whether intentional or not, this is the same idea behind the Delmar apartment complex community garden project in Pointe Claire, an initiative spearheaded by West Island Citizen Advocacy’s Bread Basket Lac St. Louis.

While some naysayers might question the value of giving residents access to a communal garden, one should realize such a project is about a lot more than just earth and vegetables.

The home to Pointe Claire’s first community garden, on Delmar Avenue just off Hymus between St. John’s and Sources boulevards, is considered one of the West Island’s underprivileged areas. With resident involvement and help from community organizations, the food grown at such communal gardens can help people living on a tight budget save a few dollars at the grocery store. Giving people direct access to fresh produce is also a plus in a time where the emphasis on eating healthy and including more greens on you plate couldn’t be stronger. Gardening also has a strong ‘green living’ aspect, as picking your vegetables straight from your own patch cuts down on Styrofoam, plastic wrap, plastic bags, and other grocery store packaging that more often than not end up in landfills.

Community gardens also have the potential to beautify areas that might otherwise be neglected. Sowing vegetables and planting flowers not only add colour to a neighbourhood; if people get involved in a community project together, it can also motivate them to do what they can to keep their neighbourhood clean.

One Delmar tenant and member of the garden’s project’s residents’ committee said she has already seen some changes since the initiative began.

“I’ve already seen some changes,” she said. “People aren’t littering as much.”

A community garden gives residents a certain amount of control over their own neighbourhood, and their own well-being.

Community gardens also have the ability to bring people together, give residents a sense of pride for their neighbourhood, and make a community really feel like a community. Thursday’s groundbreaking for the Delmar garden was a perfect example of what could be: neighbours who have been living in the same complex for years worked together, laughed and spoke with each other, even though it was the first day they actually met. Children got their hands dirty with a little bit of work, and everyone there forged a bond that -- if this project keeps going as well as it did on its first day – is sure to become stronger as the garden’s plants grow taller.

Whether in disadvantaged or more privileged areas, next to apartment buildings or in neighbourhoods scattered with larger homes, the West Island needs more community gardens like the initiative on Delmar Avenue. The benefits are just too bountiful.