Location: Evergreen Brick Works, 550 Bayview Ave, Toronto, ON, M4W 3X8
When thinking about how to best use the plants our Underhill seedsitting group had grown together, Olivia knew that she wanted to reach people who did not have access to land for gardening. Inspired by Ryan Godfrey’s balcony containers, as well as Catherine and Dorte’s container plantings outside the Scarborough Food Security Initiative Warehouse she wanted to create a workshop that allowed people to create containers of native plants for small spaces.
Over the past year she had seen repurposed milk crates effectively show that native plants could be grown anywhere and not just in the beautiful quarry gardens at the Evergreen Brick Works, and wanted to expand on that idea.
She created a workshop for the participants in Evergreen’s weekly Garden Circle volunteer program. First they were given a plant tour through all the species on offer, and then invited to plant two kinds of milkcrate gardens: an edible, or non-edible one.
The edible gardens line the alley leading up to the Children’s Garden and contain Violets, Woodland Strawberry, Anise Hyssop, Blue Vervain, and Spotted Beebalm.
The non-edible gardens, by the pedestrian entrance on the west side of the site, contain Coreopsis, Golden Alexander, New England Aster, Hairy Beardtongue, Wild Columbine and Pearly Everlasting.
Olivia plans on holding future sessions to teach the growers how to harvest seeds that can be contributed back to the Project Swallowtail program.
