Our teams have been busy growing, building, planting and tending to gardens all over Toronto indicating that the practice of growing food in the city is alive and well. Here’s a sneak peek behind the scenes of our Greenhouse, Gardening and Installation departments so you can get a taste of what we’ve been up to.
Our Greenhouse Team
It all starts in the greenhouse during the dark and dreary days of March. Corey, Rebecca and Marisol along with Victoria begin the process of bringing over 9,000 organically grown vegetable and herb seedlings to life. Our three-greenhouse system has Marc and Corey hopping to keep up with lighting and irrigation requirements.
The Little Greenhouse functions as a germination station while the Big Greenhouse serves as the nursery, and both thrive within the Main Greenhouse throughout March and April. This system allows us to limit the space that needs to be heated and is in a perpetual state of flux as the days get longer, the temperatures fluctuate and the seedlings mature. The plants move from the Lil G to the Big G to the Main G as Rebecca and Marisol pot up the one-inch cells. Space is always at a premium because one 72-cell-tray multiplies into four trays that hold 18 pots. Trays move from shelves to tables and then back on to shelves to move outside to harden off. Meanwhile, Lil G and Big G move outside both to cool off and make way for more tables. The Greenhouse reconfigures 4 times in 4 months. It’s a metamorphosis that rivals that of butterflies! The greenhouse team manage it all with smiles on their faces and without missing a beat. Marc and I are so grateful to have such an inspired and motivated group of professional growers who love what they do!
Demand for seedlings was high, so our Saturday Markets expanded to include full days on Fridays. Despite the rainy and unusually cold spring, we welcomed hundreds of gardeners, young and old, from novices to experts who were excited to get growing. It is so encouraging to see so many familiar faces as well as new gardeners who see the immense value in growing their own food at home and work.
Installations
Demand for Community Gardens continues to grow as well and have kept Marc, Sugeev and Evan busy this season. Home grown gardening is a natural extension of domestic activities, but more people are getting wise to the fact that growing at work and at school is a viable option. In fact, it’s desirable! Schools that incorporate gardening activities into their curriculum understand that gardens are a perfect setting to teach science, biology and math and a great place to learn teamwork, get away from desks and screens and foster a lifelong love of nature.
We have been so fortunate to have been working with the gifted and inspired teachers at Upper Canada College for almost a decade in the Prep School Learning Garden. This season the Upper School invited us to establish a Student Community Garden to provide for their boarding students. The vision was to create edible and native pollinator gardens to be tended by the students to feed themselves and provide for the adjacent cafeteria. A companion, perennial native plant garden was planned to enhance germination and increase the area’s beauty and biodiversity.
The chosen site is directly in front of the boarding residences yet has its challenges. Sun exposure is excellent but there is a significant slope to the terrain, and the center of the space was formerly home to a majestic oak tree that came down in a storm. The large stump left behind was ground-out but its strong root system fanned out ten feet in all directions, making it almost impossible to install raised beds or an inground garden.
Excavation of such a vast root system would have been very expensive, destructive and invasive to the many underground inhabitants. Instead of tearing up the ground and trucking out many cubic yards of debris, we decided to leave everything in place and install a lasagna garden overtop the root system and instead, feed the worms and microorganisms compost, straw and cardboard. The landfill saves another wasteful deposit, the college saves the money, and the underground biodiversity slowly digests the inputs regenerating the soil and saving our crew a lot of backbreaking work. We didn’t have to wait long before planting the pollinator garden. Inspired by the oak tree, we chose companion plants that thrive in Oak Savannahs.
A trio of BUFCO Hex Beds were installed with a bench, inviting visitors to rest and admire the flowers while two Square Post Beds joined by an arch trellis for blackberries, make for an intimate yet highly productive edible garden.
The Lasagna Garden method, layering cardboard, straw and compost provides low impact options in a variety of settings. (See Gardening Department below)
Gardening Department
It’s been a highly productive season in the gardens. BUFCO gardeners manage to juggle a full roster of residential and commercial clients who come back season after season to benefit from their expertise and knowledge. We maintain large gardens as far away as Mono and King City as well as small urban gardens both east and west of Yonge St. We plant and tend rooftop gardens, community gardens and everything in between.
Mariam and Caroline love gardening side by side with clients of all ages and abilities, many of whom are eager to learn and receive individualized, hands-on coaching. It’s one thing to watch YouTube videos, it’s quite another to be gardening, one on one, in your own garden with experienced and encouraging gardeners who know how to make things easy. Of course, many of our clients would love to spend more time in the garden but work demands and busy lifestyles mean they must leave the gardening to us and instead be content to indulge in the incredible bounty their gardens produce. Between shrinkflation, increases in food born illnesses and soaring grocery prices, more people are reaping huge rewards by reducing trips to the supermarket and growing their own food at home, work and school.
Meanwhile Arlene and Debbie, now a freelance designer, continue to design edible and pollinator gardens with functional, aesthetic and ecological approaches in mind. This residential garden brought another opportunity to take a Lasagna Garden approach. The yard is surrounded by neighbouring yards and the only way into their backyard is through their house. Bringing materials in to transform this weed infested lawn into a thriving and productive garden was a substantial amount of work but would have more than doubled if we had chosen the traditional route of excavating and soil removal first. Wherever possible we seek landscaping solutions that work with nature and reduce our overall footprint. The planting plan for this garden is in the works while the microorganisms, decomposers and worms do their work breaking down the cardboard, compost and organic straw.
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