The organizers of a new community garden in St. Albert are hoping to ease waiting lists, service the community, and help neighbours build bonds.
Although the community garden doesn't open until June 4, volunteers have already been preparing the sizeable chunk of land belonging to Christ Community Church on Coal Mine Road.
The first "work bee" for the garden occurred on May 23, and volunteers were able to rototill the land, carve out individual garden plots and add compost, and lay down wood chips for walking paths throughout.
Wilma Van Herk, a member of the Christ Community Church congregation, said although the plan for a community garden on church grounds wasn't the first land-use idea, "it was always our plan to be able to use part of that land in service to the community."
“Christ Community Church is sitting on about seven acres of land, including what the building is on," she said. "The first project we looked at was a hospice, and we worked with [a] St. Albert hospice group, but it was decided that instead of building a new building, it was more feasible to retrofit another building, so that never materialized."
After the plans to build a palliative care facility fell through, Van Herk said, members of the church started looking into the community gardening scene in St. Albert.
“Once we were looking into it further, a bit of research showed that the gardens in St. Albert all have waiting lists," she said. "So, obviously for us, the time was right.
"We had kind of the perfect spot: a lot of land that’s available [and] a large parking lot that is right beside the garden area making it accessible that way."
Van Herk said the community garden area is roughly around 6,000 square metres.
"I believe we have 30 plots," she said. People who register to use the garden can choose between two different-sized plots: three metres by three metres, or three metres by six metres.
"We basically reached out to the community to see what the interest was because it was not our intent to have this as the church garden. We wanted this to be a community garden that we could support," said Van Herk.
Filling a need
Aida Mustapic, the founder of the St. Albert Backyard Gardening group, said the shortage of community gardening space in St. Albert and the lengthy waiting lists make this "very exciting news.”
“Many of our members who currently garden in minimal spaces will greatly benefit from this," Mustapic said. "It will definitely be a game changer for all the townhouse and condominium folks who currently have no space to garden.”
Van Herk said there is plenty of room for the community garden to expand in the future. "As the need arises, we can expand further out because, taking off the church building and parking lot, we still have close to four acres available that we can work with,” she said.
“Once they release all the space they have available, it might make them a community gardening centre of the city,” said Mustapic. "They certainly can benefit from all the help they can get to help them kick off such a wonderful and ambitious project for our city.”
Van Herk said preparing the garden for growing season was a substantial collaborative effort. She said the church provided $1,500 to get the project started, members of the Grace Family Church shared their knowledge and advice from their experience with their church's "food forest," and other members of the community not affiliated with Christ Community Church have attended planning meetings for the Coal Mine Road community garden.
"There’s been a lot of people who’ve given a lot of support to the community garden," Van Herk said.
Christ Community Church and the area surrounding it was part of the land recently annexed from Sturgeon County and acquired by the City of St. Albert.
“That was a big thing for us because then we truly were a part of St. Albert rather than the country-cousin kind of thing," Van Herk said with a chuckle.
To register for a plot you must complete an application form found on the "Coalmine Road Community Garden" Facebook page.
