Garden variety problem

>> Veggie patches and herb plots to make way for condos

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Photo by Jason Felker

Last week’s sudden and unceremonious quashing of an upstart garden on the Plateau highlighted a problem that neighbourhood greenthumbs have long complained about. Namely, those who want to plant and grow their own food simply don’t have the space to do it.

The unofficial and unsanctioned Jardin Bien Vivres, on Ste-Dominique south of Mont-Royal, was born last summer on the site of a long-vacant lot between the vegan restaurant Aux Vivres and a daycare. When the loose affiliation of garden organizers tried to get official city permission for the garden, they were told in a letter from then-mayor Pierre Bourque that their file was “under review.” They received no word back from the city until last week, when a demolition crew showed up.

“The city issued a demolition permit to the owner without any warning to us,” says Melina Hoffman, a self-described “avid, avid gardener” and one of the garden’s supporters. “It’s such an example of grassroots beauty, and it’s clearly community greenspace. The Plateau needs more of it. There’s a total dearth of space for Plateau gardening.”
Montreal is generally regarded as a good city for community gardening, with around 100 city-run gardens used by at least 10,000 residents of the old City of Montreal, according to a 1999 McGill geography study. However, according to the city department of sport, recreation and urban development, there are only four existing community gardens on the Plateau. Due to the high demand for lots—waiting lists are between two and five years—requests have been made to enlarge the garden at de Lorimier and Guilford and to create a fifth. The Jardin Bien Vivres, however, was completely autonomous and, more importantly, on private land. That left it legally unprotected when the owners decided to rip the garden up.

“We were told by the city that the space was not appropriate for a garden because it was not on a street corner and it was an enclosed space,” says Nadia Bini, another Bien Vivres supporter who handled communications with the city administration.

This claim is confirmed by Martial Larose, who is handling that dossier for the city’s department of parks and greenspaces. He says the city does not want to convert the lot into a park because of “problems of security, location, accessibility and visibility. It’s far from being an ideal spot. And we can’t forget the housing crisis either. But if [the gardening enthusiasts] wish to approach the owners privately, we would certainly encourage that.”
There is little chance of that happening, however. Bini says that the owners stand too much to gain by building on the lot to sell it. “We have to take into account both the value of the land itself and its potential revenue” if they were to buy the land off the present owners, she says. Those sums are bound to be out of reach for a small group of community gardeners.
Still, Hoffman thinks that she and her fellow would-be gardeners are the victims of bad timing. “If we had the garden through the summer, we would have made it an integral part of the community,” she says. “Then they would never have been able to touch it. We needed nothing but time.” :