Alex Taylor Community Garden

Description:

The Alex Taylor Community Garden began in 2004 as an initiative of Edmonton’s School Lunch Program, a program of Edmonton City Centre Church Corporation (ECCCC).  The initial premise was that the garden would be utilized to support initiatives around food security, expand resources available to our food-based programs, and above all, to provide the opportunity for clients of inner city ECCCC programs to enjoy the benefits of gardening.  Gardening space would also be available to community members, if not fully utilized by ECCCC programs.

In the first season, five programs gardened, as well as four community members.  Three of the programs struggled in their efforts to involve clients, so decided to not garden in the 2005 season.  This year, most of the gardeners are local community residents growing a wonderful mix of vegetables, herbs, fruit, and flowering plants.  Each of the gardeners plants and maintains their own full or half garden bed.

Along with our 10 raised beds, we have a 24 square-foot ground level garden area, which is a work in progress.  This spring we planted some raspberry canes and black currant bushes (kindly donated by another community garden), as well as some rhubarb plants and potatoes.  We have lots of room for planting ideas for next season.

So far we’ve been very fortunate to have the resources to design and build the community garden in the way that we want to.  The raised beds are ideal.  We have great soil, a reliable water source, a garden shed with a variety of gardening tools, and a great mix of gardeners!

We are also very fortunate to have two Master Composters gardening at Alex Taylor.

In the 2007 season, we set up compost bins, and looked into diverting water from a rooftop drainpipe into water barrels. 

We’re planning more get-togethers for our gardeners, including barbeques and/or potlucks once a month.