Canada Food Board WW1 Campaign. Artists Joseph Ernest Sampson

In the late 20th century, community gardens started popping up in Calgary, mostly next to community centres and schoolyards.

They created an enhanced sense of community as you got to meet people who lived not just next door, but neighbours who lived blocks away. For schools, it was also a great way to teach urban kids where food came from and how it grows.

The modern community garden movement was also a catalyst for people to create back and front yard gardens a practice that had pretty much been abandoned in the late 20th century as Canadians became more urbanized and moved away from their rural roots.

Because the COVID-19 virus has resulted in some food shortages and restricted access to grocery stores, futurists are now speculating even more people will convert front and/or back lawns into vegetable gardens.

Urban Farming

In 2013, a group of Calgary volunteers created Canada’s largest urban agricultural farm on an 11-acre parcel of Provincially owned land (Transportation Utility Corridor) just west of Canada Olympic Park. The produce grown was given to local agencies including Alpha House, Calgary’s Women’s Emergency Shelter, Inn From the Cold and Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre. Unfortunately, the expansion of the Stoney Trail/Trans-Canada Highway interchange as part of the Ring Road meant the closure of the farm and negotiation for a new parcel of land at 61st Ave and Stoney Trail S.E. has been unsuccessful.

The upside though is the model for a volunteer-based urban farm to help feed our less fortunate citizens is in place. Every city has huge tracks of land under major power lines, above pipelines and other services that are ideal sites for urban farms. In Calgary, 50th Ave SW from Elbow Drive to Stanley Road is a great example of such a tract of land.

Flash Back

In the early 20th century, “Victory Gardens” were common place across Canada during the First and Second World Wars.

The idea was the more produce grown by Canadians in their front and back yards, vacant lots, public flower gardens and parks, the more food that could be shipped to soldiers overseas.

At its peak in 1944, there were an estimated 209,200 Victory Gardens in cities across Canada producing a total of 57,000 tonnes of vegetables.

The downside (there is always a downside) was the vast majority of Victory Gardens were on the private property of home owner’s land - only 3% were available to those without a yard.

Link: History Victory Gardens

Link: Southern Alberta Victory Garden

victory garden.jpg — Metropolitan Life Insurance4 Company employees tending to a Victory Garden (1939 - 1945)

Backyard Gardens

Wander the back alleys of Calgary’s older communities on a summer day today and look for the small, older cottage houses and chances are may find a large backyard gardens with potatoes, zucchini, beans, carrots, peas, rhubarb, tomatoes, strawberries, raspberries and other plants flourishing.

And really, it’s not that long ago that instead of every house having a two-car garage they would have a big garden with fruit trees covering about the same amount of space to supply vegetables for a family of 6+ all winter.

Many of Calgary’s older neighbourhoods have homes with flourishing backyard gardens.

Calgary also has hundreds of community gardens with more being added every year. It is not hard to imagine that this trend will increase in the future.

The Future

Will the demand for suburban single family homes with a big yards for gardens rise? Will those tiny front yards with a lonely ornamental tree next to protruding garages become vegetable gardens? Or will the lonely front yard tree be replaced by a mini orchard?
Will suburban developers start converting public spaces, boulevards and entrances into community vegetable gardens?
Will suburban developers start promoting single family homes with cold storage rooms in the basement vs wine cellars to store root vegetables from your garden?
Will school sites that sit empty all summer (i.e. the growing season) become large community garden sites?
Will high-rise condo developers be looking at how they can convert more of their outdoor common area to vegetable gardens, rather than just decorative ones? Maybe we will see more condo proposals like Orchards, Lamb Development’s aborted project that included 66 apple trees in the street level space between the two towers.
Will new developers market their new multi-family projects as having balconies large enough for vertical gardening?
Will master-planned urban villages make the community garden a more prominent feature of their plan and marketing? East Village already has an amazing community garden.
Will we see a more infill homes with flat roofs that are vegetable gardens?

Note: An edited version of this blog was published in the Calgary Herald’s New Condo Section on May 23, 2020.