Canada: Enter the Vancouver urban garden that’s been teaching people how to grow their own food for over 40 years
City Farmer’s Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden in Kitsilano offers tours, lessons and advice
CBC News
This story is part of the CBC Creator Network series.
Jul 19, 2022
Excerpt:
In the middle of a bustling Vancouver neighbourhood lies an agricultural oasis created from a couple of vacant lots that dates back to 1978.
That’s when a group of people calling themselves City Farmer created the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden in Kitsilano to teach people living in the city how to grow their own food in a sustainable way.
The garden and its work inspiring urban farming over the past 44 years is now being highlighted in a short film called Parking Lot to Paradise through the CBC’s Creator Network.
“It is a marvellous place to be,” Michael Levenston, co-founder of City Farmer Society and garden site manager, told CBC’s On the Coast host Gloria Macarenko. “I was 27 in 1978 and I just turned 71, so it’s been a lot of years.”
The garden sits on more than a quarter of an acre of land and offers educational lessons, tours and gardening advice six days a week. Schools can book tours or people can just walk in to enjoy a lesson.
“It’s like horticultural therapy,” Levenston said, adding that staff also teach people how to compost in their own gardens.
