Only the Best.

Hamilton Community Gardens

I’ve always wanted to have a garden to call my own. Watch things grow, get mad at rabbits, and feast with friends on the bounty of the land, come harvest. I’m yet to get this opportunity but I am getting a little bit closer! With my new role at Greenhorizons Sod Farm, I suggested we get involved with community gardens in and around the city.

When I first brought up the idea, I naively thought we’d be getting into a small, relatively straight-forward community of veggie-lovers, but boy was I surprised! It quickly escalated from one small garden down town to that one plus two on the mountain, one in Stoney Creek and another in Burlington!

Powell Park Community Garden

The crazy thing is that everyone I’ve talked to from the gardens is overwhelmingly enthusiastic over the littlest of things they’ve got going on! People are excited about the rhubarb from the warmth this spring but also worried that the warmth we’ve had will hinder plants that started budding before winter had its last hurrah! Either way, I’ve been enlightened to a whole new community of people that are eagerly anticipating Victoria Day weekend (an unofficial gardening kick-off weekend around the golden horseshoe), and some that have already got their green thumbs, dirty!

Hamilton and the GHA are boasting over 66 community gardens this summer! There is no telling how much local produce is going to be coming out of the ground, simply from the hard work of a couple hundred committed citizens!

With so many gardens, I had no idea where to start or who to contact to get involved. Fortunately I came across some very helpful people. To dig for information and get the ball rolling, I gave a call to the Hamilton Community Garden Network to see how our farm can be of use to these nature-loving do-gooders. Clare from the HCGN, who has been pivotal in our involvement so far, set me up with the Powell Park "mini"-garden coordinator, Chad Mackay, as well as with Sara Collyer from Neighbour-2-Neighbour.

The Powell Park garden is in its seedling year, just getting started and the group is itching to make things happen! Their kick-off day is officially June 2; however I’m sure they’ll be hard at work before then!

Sara from Neighbour-to-Neighbour actually decided to spread us out a little bit; recommending our participation in three mini-gardens that they help with. With Sara’s help, we’ve got involved with the Heritage Green Baptist Church garden, the Eastmount Elementary School garden, and the Chalmers Presbyterian Church garden.

Finally North Burlington Baptist Church boasts the biggest of all the gardens we’re involved with, and their expanding! Heather Griggs, the coordinator of the garden, has been nothing but wonderful to work with and I can’t wait to see what’s growing on in their garden this summer!

North Burlington Baptist Church Community Garden

I'm fill of anticipation to see what this small fraction of the community that we’re lucky enough to work with has in store over the next few months! Every day I want to drive out to each and every plot just for the chance to run into one of the gardeners and hear about their latest plight in the battle against weeds, animals and weather! 

Be sure to wave at the gardeners the next time you walk or drive past a plot but be warned: conversation will almost definitely include some talk of soil, weeds, pests, animals and if you’re really lucky, the overflow of produce from the garden!

The plants aren’t even growing yet and I’m proud of the work these gardeners have put in! Happy Gardening, Hamilton, and may 2012 yield a bountiful harvest!

-Ben

Only the Best

Stringing Together Words

It seems like content has become an ever diminishing element on the internet, lately. Everything has become some form of Flash and HTML5, making good old-fashioned words a thing of the past! With 140 characters on twitter, and facebook being more about pictures and videos than words; it makes sense that we take some time to write a little down! That being said, a picture says a thousand words and there's nothing I find myself doing more online than scrolling pinterest or reddit for the imgur topics or pictures of something interesting and entertaining! So here I am, the inaugural blog post for the BigYellowBag Blog, preparing myself for a barrage of content-creation suggestions from my colleagues in the office! Stay tuned for Sod and Soil related posts and hopefully we can get down and dirty for the nitty-gritty's of what's going on in Hamilton, Ontario!

-Ben