Garden Profile

Dandelion Corners

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Dandelion Corners Gardening Project began in 2001 as a way for resident members to create beauty around their homes, build friendships, and 'do something positive for ourselves'. We chose the name Dandelion Corners to reflect our vision of the dandelion as a much maligned plant.

Our complexes straddle several blocks in the area of Belmead and La Perle just across the street from the West Edmonton Mall. Among all the wealth, the area holds pockets of low income and transient families. What we seek to do in Dandelion Corners is to take a lesson from the dandelion.

Dandelions grow in clusters and are regarded as much of a nuisance, but to a child they are a beautiful first floral gift for mom. Like dandelions, social housing complexes cluster throughout the city and are sometimes held in scorn as an eyesore and source of trouble for the community. By taking the name Dandelion Corners, we hope to raise the profile of social housing in the west end as safe, desirable and attractive. As the project aims to break social isolation and influence the self-esteem level of residents involved, the gardening project also hopes to dispel stereo-types about poverty and re-framing the public's perception of social housing residents.

Dandelion Corners has a six-member core group that organizes and coordinates the organization's resources and activities. Each of the six involved complexes has one volunteer coordinator who recruits memberships from the tenants and takes care of plant distribution. One of these also takes on the main Coordinator role who functions as the contact person for the garden club and oversees year round activities. The project also receives staff support from Community Services, City of Edmonton. This staff member assists in negotiating donations from retail and the Muttart Conservatory, in administrative needs such as producing the flyers, membership cards, annual evaluation as well as in ongoing support to the coordinators.

The $2 membership fee is pooled to help pay for the meeting costs and volunteer appreciation gifts.

Every spring the Main Coordinator and the CS staff member explore community businesses to obtain new plant donations and to secure the existing ongoing donations. Over the years it has been mainly Canadian Tire and the Muttart Conservatory that have donated their left over annuals, usually around June. Other places such as Wal Mart have donated $25 gift cards.

Another main support to the garden club is the Community Garden Network. Their support this past year has enabled the garden club to distribute plant seeds and compost as well as purchase large and small garden tools including 6 garden wagons, shovels, hand tools, gloves, peat moss, etc.

As well as gardening, it is our goal to develop skills within the organization so that new leaders will come forward. We utilize this club as a community-building tool, to network with each other and with other community groups, to explore our strengths, learn from each other and grow.

Challenges

Unfortunately, our neighbourhood is a transient one, so commitment to gardening can be sporadic.

Tenant members move on and Coordinators have to repeat their recruitment efforts every year. While sincerely interested, tenants are not always enthusiastic gardeners so the donated plants my not always be taken care off or sometimes not even planted. Coordinators have gone out of their way to encourage new gardeners and at times adopt an extra plot, a plot for a vacant unit or common areas. Despite these concerns, the club has steadily grown in size and has secured additional members from Kingfisher Estates. Despite their own life challenges, Coordinators have been extremely consistent and a new main Coordinator was in place for 2008.

Activities have also increased as new ideas sprout up. In 2006 the CS staff member took photos of the gardens and held a well attended slide show at Kara West. The membership the CGN meant that compost was available which meant organizing the hauling of the material to the CRH complexes. This also meant partnering with John Feddes from Park West at the Covenant Church. A private donation from a lady in the west end included buckets of lilies to be distributed.

Future plans include two slide shows instead of one, refined process for plant donations with Canadian Tire, securing bulbs from Muttart, and a DC newsletter.