As I mentioned last week, a meeting for the people living in the vicinity of the Regent St. garden was organized and the neighbours invited. Fifteen people showed up. Two residents were troubled by the garden and spoke up. One resident was worried that the garden would block the laneway that the people living on Regent Street used to access their backyards. This is a casual use but still a possible problem. The resident felt that the gardeners would park their cars in the laneway and thus block his path. When he understood that, one, we would put a condition in the garden contract that all gardeners must sign, which stated that cars could not be parked in the laneway, he was satisfied.
The second problem that was raised was the size of the garden, several residents did not want to lose the green space and were worried that people from around the City would be trampling in and out of the area at all hours, thus destroying this tranquil spot. When they realized that only 9-10 garden plots would be available and that they, the residents, would be involved in the determination of the exact location of those plots, they were accepting. We also stated that we would put a condition in the contract that asked gardeners to respect others by considering the time they began and ended their gardening activities.
The acceptance of the garden grew as the people there understood that they could have a garden plot if they wanted one. At least one person had thought that the plots would be given out to people from all over town, once it was clear that he could have a plot right behind his house, everything changed. After about fifty minutes all agreed that we could proceed to the next step and that was to meet at the garden and lay out the plots.
We set a date for the following Saturday and from that point on the garden has flourished. Next week I will talk about two key elements of any successful community garden, the contract and the garden coordinator.
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