A community garden presents countless
opportunities to upcycle unwanted/discarded items for the purpose of growing
food and reducing waste. This season, we built a new rain barrel stand upcycled
from pallets and converted a broken cold frame into a new raised garden bed.
With the support of a community member, we have made our ecosystem more
pollinator friendly with the addition of a bee hotel constructed from hollow
stems. We were also able to further enlarge our growing capacity without making
drastic changes to our green space through upcycling.
Up-cycled delivery pallets make a great rain barrel stand.
Thanks to the support of Faith & The
Common Good, TD Friends of the Environment Foundation and Scotts Canada, we had
enough soil and compost to double the amount of plants we typically grow in
containers. Garden@Kimbourne volunteers drilled holes into dozens of empty ice
cream buckets from a local ice cream shop and transformed them into plant
containers. This upcycling strategy combined with the new soil and compost has
enabled us to expand our growing space overnight–adding the equivalent of 4-5 raised
beds full of crops, including beans, cucumbers, eggplant, marigolds, tomatoes,
and peppers. We are growing far more food than in any previous growing season!
A big thank you as well to Garden@Kimbourne's amazing volunteers. Without you
none of this would be possible.
Up-cycled ice cream containers are helping us grow even more food this season.
Last year marked our biggest growing season. A
total amount of 179.35 kg of produce was harvested with well over half of it
going to our local food bank partner Nourish East End. This year we hope to
exceed this collective accomplishment as a community with the support of all of
our upcycling projects!
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| Bee hotel and sign both constructed by garden volunteers. |
Growing Community
It has been an exceptional year of growing
community for Garden@Kimbourne. We were joined by The Decom Post, Not Far From
the Tree, Thorncliffe Park Urban Farmers, and Nourish East End for a mini-eco
fair at our annual Open House. Garden@Kimbourne's volunteer community is also
growing exponentially. With two more months to go in the growing season, we are
just one volunteer away from surpassing the number of volunteers that
contributed last season!
With much gratitude,
The Garden@Kimbourne Team
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