2011 Improving Accessibility

The Benefits for Everyone

While growing and sharing your own local, fresh food is a major reason for joining a community garden, there are many other benefits.

One important benefit is the social aspect of a community garden, where people from diverse backgrounds can share their gardening experience. It is a great joy to see the bright faces of new gardeners who just harvested their first radishes!

Physical activity is also an important component of gardening, and being able to maintain a certain amount of agility can promote long-term health. This is especially true for our aging population, and can also help get our children off to a healthy start.

Everyone can benefit from gardening to reduce stress. Having the ability to choose your own seeds, and having your own plot of land or planter, fills our need to nurture and care for life.

These are just some of the key benefits of gardening—and why our community garden is here. This is also why we are part of the

Toronto Community Garden Network - TCGN -

Not Everyone Benefits – Yet

By adopting the theme of Access, we hope to raise awareness of the full spectrum of access issues. Our aim is to encourage other community gardens in Toronto to be even more inclusive and mindful of those with special needs.

Access is about:

People who can’t afford healthy food can still grow it

• Creating gardens that support people with a range of physical and mental health abilities

• Creating safe social spaces for people suffering isolation so they can meet new friends and get to know the community

• Showing children where their food comes from and helping seniors pass along their gardening tradition

• Providing different opportunities to garden which fits with urban life. This can include perma-culture, container planters and sensory gardens

• Demonstrating how gardening methods such as no-till, are not just for the physically heroic

• Understanding the real needs of those in your community - just building a raised garden bed won’t always be the answer.

We can learn a great deal from sharing the many “access success” stories created by Toronto gardeners.

If you are interested in exploring Access-ability with the TCGN Access Team - Whether it is for yourself, or to make your community garden easier to access, please contact SUSAN at mail@tcgn.ca with the word "Access" in the subject line.