Vancouver-Based Garden Matching Program Reimagines Urban Land Use
A Regenerate:Hope story, featuring people who dedicate their energy, time, and love to making our planet a better place for all human beings and more-than-human beings
For gardeners and growers, the year begins not with January, but with the start of the growing season. They make plans according to the last frost, to the lunar cycle, to the start of the dry/wet season — what seeds to start indoors, what seedlings to transplant, how many hot summer days will the peppers get. Gardeners seem to be more connected to nature’s processes, and after 18 years of gardening, James and Camille know instinctively the arc of the sun’s path throughout the year, the time when certain birds migrate to and from Vancouver, BC, the moment to pull out tomato plants, the instant to check on their desert king fig tree as the 2000+ figs start to ripen.
The first time I met Camille Savage, co-founder and mastermind of an urban organic garden matching program in Vancouver called Food 4 Thought, was when I was being matched to a home’s yard to start gardening. Even through the Zoom window, I felt her warmth and generosity, and passion for the project. Her partner, James Sztyler, is an 18-year-and-counting master organic urban grower, enthusiastic educator, and fig aficionado, who learned a lot from his grandmother, an avid gardener and knowledgeable herbalist. Together, they helped me set up my first raised bed in July 2021, which was definitely late for Vancouver’s growing season. (Despite the late start, I harvested about 90 tomatoes from 16 tomato plants amongst other leafy greens that year!)
👩🌾 👨🌾 Connecting apartment-dweller-gardeners with no space to grow food with people who have under-utilised green space to share
Vancouverites are keen growers. The city has about 110 community gardens. Gardeners typically pay a small amount per season to garden from a 2-by-4-feet garden bed. Community gardens are usually temporary and sit atop empty concrete lots that await to become luxury condominiums. At any given time, community gardens have 50 to 400 people on the waitlist.
Food 4 Thought is an urban organic garden matching program that started in the Kitsilano neighbourhood in the spring of 2020, matching keen apartment dwelling gardeners with welcoming house owners or tenants who have yard space. Many gardeners who join the program have waited years to get into a community garden or have grown from their north-facing shady balcony without much success. Upon joining Food 4 Thought, gardeners get a space (that’s much bigger than 2-by-4-feet!) to grow organic, nutritious vegetables; the homeowners, also known as garden hosts, get to look out into a beautiful, colourful, and lush yard.
The COVID-19 pandemic gave interior designer Camille much needed time to realise this long-time idea. At that time, she felt a calling to put it all together. She listened to the whisper in her ear (possibly by a hummingbird, a ladybird, or the fig tree in her backyard!) and took action. She received support from the Kitsilano Neighbourhood Small Grants program and matched their first 15 gardeners to homeowners. What started as a part-time passion project has grown into a full-time lifestyle. Now, going into their 4th growing season, they have over 100 matches in the city, from Dunbar and Kerrisdale to the west, to South Main, Renfrew-Collingwood, and Hastings-Sunrise to the east.
Throughout Food 4 Thought’s 3 years, gardeners and their hosts have made lifelong friendships. To give a few examples: fourth-year gardener Heather Lopez-Rees describes her host family as ‘a part of [her] family’; my own host family invited me to the children’s birthday parties; other gardeners have been invited to weekend barbecues and holiday homes by their hosts.
🐝 🌧 ️Connecting with nature and life
Gardening is about getting our hands in the soil; being with nature, with the sun, the earth, the wind, and rain; smelling the grass; sharing the abundance with insects and other animals; hearing birdsongs; building a community of humans and more-than-humans. Although living only a 5-minute drive from the centre of Vancouver, Camille and James’ garden is a biodiverse oasis with countless insects, finches, chickadees, hummingbirds, sparrows, and squirrels dropping by to visit from time to time.
Gardening is also about growing and eating delicious, nutritious, and fresh food, and nurturing life as it nurtures us. To Camille and James, it is important to do it organically, without chemicals and without disrupting nature’s processes.
‘People may come into the program just wanting the knowledge or information on how to grow their own veggie garden, but they can’t help but be transformed by the whole gardening experience. They’ll always learn something unexpected about life.’
— Camille Savage
Some of the techniques James teaches to gardeners include no-till, no-dig, cover cropping, seed saving, mulching, and composting. They also teach gardeners to use natural amendments and remedies, which takes a lot more curiosity, observation, and experimenting than blindly applying pesticides, fertilisers, or other chemicals as bandaids and quick fixes. ‘Pests are warning signs that something is going on with the plant or soil. Take aphids, for example. They are attracted to unhappy plants. Once we correct the issue with the soil, the plant becomes healthy and aphids aren’t attracted anymore,’ shares Camille. More importantly, holistic and biodynamic growing encourages more life to be present in the garden, rather than less. Cherry Archer, a third-year Food 4 Thought gardener, likes that bees thrive in her garden, which in turn ensures her produce gets pollinated.
A Food 4 Thought garden doesn’t only transform a bare lawn into a food forest, it brings back plant, insect, bird, soil — life — into a highly urbanised city.
🌱 ♻️️ Connecting with new skills
9 out of 10 gardeners that join the program are new or novice gardeners, so James and Camille make sure to support them by providing guidance through online and outdoor workshops, tools, resources, education materials, compost, seeds, and plant starts.
According to a study in Glasgow, Scotland, community gardens have also been found to be places that ‘facilitate the recovery of individual agency, construction of new forms of knowledge and participation, and renewal of reflexive and proactive communities that provide broader lessons for building more progressive forms of work in cities’.
Not surprisingly, Food 4 Thought gardeners have experienced profound life changes. Heather has learned that a small space can indeed grow a ‘tremendous amount of food’. Cherry shares, ‘I’m a far more confident and competent gardener now. For 6 months of the year all my vegetable consumption is from my garden and they’re organic.’ What’s more, she has been able to grow so much food that she’s learned ways to preserve food for the winter, such as pesto and kimchi! Laura Barth, another long-time gardener, has used her bountiful, vibrant street-facing garden to start conversations with neighbours about growing their own food organically. She has learned that ‘even during difficult times — or maybe because of them — many people long for connection and the opportunity to be a part of a community’.
🌍 🌏 Connecting beyond
‘We’ve had so much fun putting this project together, meeting new people, watching new gardeners experience their gardening seasons, and seeing the vision we’ve created in the community,’ Camille tells me with fervour. As the first garden matching program in Canada that they’re aware of, they want to keep creating the best experience for gardeners and garden hosts alike, and expand beyond Vancouver to other urban areas. Already, there are people in different cities, like London, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Philadelphia, USA, who are interested in bringing the Food 4 Thought model to their neighbourhoods.
Food 4 Thought doesn’t receive any external funding. James and Camille are a two-person team who devote everything to the project. They rely heavily upon word of mouth for promotion, donations for operations, and a group of dedicated and big-hearted volunteers for administrative support, as well as physical help with their own backyard garden. Camille says, ‘We are forever grateful to all our volunteers for the time they set aside to assist us in this important work and community call to action.’ Knowing James and Camille, they always give more than they get. Volunteers go home with potted plants of herbs, fresh produce, figs, plant cuttings, seeds, compost, and a wealth of gardening wisdom and know-how.
🌻 🍄 Connecting with you
If you live in or near Vancouver, BC, and are interested in joining this microcosm of regenerative urban growers, or if you would like to start a garden matching program in your city, please reach out to James and Camille at garden4food4thought@gmail.com. Follow their community transformation on Instagram.
Regenerate:Hope is a series that tells the stories and regenerative journeys of people who dedicate their energy, time, and love to making our planet a better place for all human beings and more-than-human beings. If you know a story you would like to share or wish to be a part of the series yourself, please contact us at truequerxs@gmail.com.
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