“One day we stuck a shovel in the ground, and we never looked back,” says Pastor Mike Mills of Advent Lutheran, Toronto, telescoping the church’s speedy decision-making process into an even speedier description. “The congregation held a vote on Sunday. By Wednesday, we were mapping out plots, and by the following Sunday we were digging.” Nestled in an island of land — locally nicknamed the “peanut” — created by a split in Don Mills Road north of Sheppard Avenue in Toronto, the grounds of Advent in early spring look much like the grounds of the highrise apartments that dominate the neighbourhood. Yellow dandelion flowers poke up through the newly greening lawn; tiny blossoms on maple trees dangle from branches turning lush with leaves. But tucked among the traditional lawn landscape of this church are dozens of freshly dug garden plots. Some fan out in a circle, others line up in a neat soldier row. Some are lined with wooded dividers; others have narrow paths of grass between them. But come summer, all will be overflowing with vegetables, herbs, fruits and flowers.
“Right from the beginning, the idea was that it would be a garden for the community,” explains Mills, “not just for members of the church.” The church’s Sunday school has two of the 104 plots, with the rest avidly cultivated by a diverse mix of people from the neighbourhood. With 26 different language and culture groups, immigrant and refugees from the world over make up the majority of the garden’s plot holders, and the food they grow is equally diverse: Asian vegetables such as bok choy, Lebanese greens such as mulikhia, Jamaican hot peppers, and, appropriately enough, even peanuts (perhaps in tribute to the local name for the peanut-shaped island of land).
“This area is really lacking in places to buy food,” Mills points out, and the garden is an important supplement to many of the low-income gardeners’ food dollars. This explains the large waiting list — even though the number of plots has almost doubled from the original 60 in 2005, there are many more people who want space. “We dream of becoming a food centre for the neighbourhood,” says Mills as he outlines his vision for an expanded program: a green roof on the building, a community kitchen, after school cooking classes for kids, a farmers’ market… “This is a place where the community can come together, a place where people can gather.”
While the practical benefits to the local community are clear, benefits to the church community clearly animate Mills: “There has been a real shift for the church, a change in our fundamental self-understanding — this is everyone’s land, not just our own. This isn’t a theology that’s separate — this is a theology that grows out of common acts of living together.”
White-robed choir members lead the procession through the dark, incense-filled corridors of St. Thomas’s Anglican in downtown Toronto. The congregation follows behind and, reaching the doorway opening from the church into the bright sunlight of the spring day, everyone squints from the light and basks in the warmth. It is Rogation Sunday, the day the church garden will be blessed.
The Rector of St. Thomas’s, Rev. Mark Andrews, sprinkles holy water over the garden beds, playfully threatening to splash some on the congregants. The mood is both joyful and focussed as everyone recites Psalm 65: “Thou visitest the earth and waterest it: Thou makest it very plenteous… and blessest the increase of it.”
The tiny, hidden garden is in an unlikely spot. Tucked in a small patch near the Sexton’s cottage, there’s a parking lot beside it, a laneway along it, and University of Toronto building construction going on around it. But from this small spot — just 350 square feet of garden space — St. Thomas’s has grown a surprising amount of fresh food — more than 900 servings of vegetables — for its Out of the Heat program.
Begun in 2006 by University of Toronto master’s student (and St. Thomas’s choir member) Suzanne Brooks, the garden consists of raised beds planted with lettuce, peas, beans, carrots, beets, tomatoes, cabbages and other vegetables and herbs. Volunteers from the congregation do all of the labour — from the building of the raised beds to the weekly weeding. “People embraced the garden right away,” says andrews. “There was a natural connection with what the volunteers in the Out of the heat program were already doing.”
On Thursday nights and friday mornings throughout the growing season, volunteers pick and wash vegetables, which are then distributed to the guests who take part in the church’s friday evening Out of the heat program. along with a meal, the approximately 80 people who visit each week are invited to take a bag of fresh produce away with them. “Many of the guests live on the streets and don’t have access to preparation facilities, so it was a challenge to provide a mix of vegetables that people could eat right here or take away with them. I didn’t think anyone would want the beets, but I was surprised, they were very popular. We never have anything left over,” says Brooks.
Perhaps surprisingly, given the site’s location, there has also been no vandalism. still, the church doesn’t take chances. The garden shed is kept locked, and it’s probably the only combination lock in Toronto with a Biblical in-joke: the numbers to unlock it are taken from scripture, from a parable about gardening. The main challenge is predation by the ubiquitous urban creatures — squirrels and racoons. for this year, the garden’s second, volunteers have constructed cages and placed nets over the raised beds for protection.
“I’ve found that people are eager to get involved,” says Brooks of the more than 30 church volunteers involved in the garden. “When you start a project like this, you just can’t believe the expertise that becomes available, the talents people might not normally have a chance to exercise or express in a church setting.” she notes that one of the biggest benefits of the garden to the church, along with providing food for the Out of the heat program, is that it provides an opportunity for fellowship, “a chance for congregation members to get to know each other in a different way.”
The garden also encourages church members to think about the church environment in a different way and to make connections: “We’ve increased our composting program as a result of the garden,” says Brooks, “and we’re looking at installing rain barrels. The garden brings these issues forward as a natural progression.” Brooks suggests that for the parish, the connections go beyond the social and environmental and into the spiritual. “a really important part of this is that we’re all stewards of creation. We need to ask what we can do to promote sustainable living. as churches, we have an added responsibility.”
By caring for creation, gardening and faith find fertile common ground, and the metaphor is rooted in earth. What is being nurtured through these acts of cultivation is more than food, it’s spirit.
