All About the Toronto Community Garden Network

The Story Behind The TCGN

Mission Statement:

The Toronto Community Garden Network is working to encourage a healthy community gardening movement in the City of Toronto, supporting and linking community gardeners.

Our goal is to encourage the creation of gardens across the City of Toronto and to make community gardening an integral part of city life.

.

The Toronto Community Garden Network -also know as the TCGN -was formed in 1999 as a natural progression of the increasing interest in community gardening. FoodShare had sponsored an annual winter meeting of community garden leaders since 1996. It was at the March 1999 meeting that the idea of formalizing the group into a network arose.

Advocacy with all levels of government is seen as an integral activity of the network in order to ensure the accessibility of opportunities for gardening. It was at the suggestion of the TCGN that Toronto's City Council adopted the 1999 Community Garden Action Plan that calls for the creation of a community garden in a park in every ward. Since that time TCGN members have received much welcomed support from Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation. By working together TCGN and Parks, Forestry and Recreation have created a supportive climate for community gardening that is looked to as a model by groups and municipalities across the country and abroad.

The following year, TCGN organized a conference of the American Community Gardening Association, in partnership with Parks, Forestry, and Recreation, and FoodShare Toronto. Not only did gardeners from across Toronto meet and exchange ideas with each other but also with community gardeners, activists and municipal staff from around the world. The conference would not have been possible had it not been for the tireless volunteer efforts of many, many TCGN members who were very eager to show off Toronto's community gardens.

.

Education

The TCGN provides a structure for collective action and sharing and acts as a catalyst for community development. We provide information, resources and educational opportunities to gardeners. As well as supporting the development of community gardens, the TCGN promotes organic gardening methods, the conservation of resources and habitat restoration. We also encourage the use of heritage seeds in order to preserve genetic diversity and encourage the growing of culturally appropriate foods.

.

.

Website

Since the launch of our website (donated to us by CELOS Centre For Local Research into Public Space), and hosted by (www.parkcommons.ca), we have been better able to facilitate volunteering all across the city. We now have a database of the members of the network, which includes descriptions and locations of many community gardens. We have raised the profile of community gardening in the City of Toronto. It is much easier now to foster linkages to other groups and networks, and connect with the broader community. We can now provide the opportunity for people from diverse cultures to share their gardening experience and their gardening stories.

Check the TCGN website regularly to keep up-to-date with our progress. Find out about our events such as Seedy Saturdays and Sundays which are – our prespring seed exchange. We also have community garden tours, and community garden training courses, as well as various other gardening workshops.

.

Community Process

Even though there are no permanent paid positions in our organization (we are run by volunteers) we do have a stable, organizational structure. We use the "Community Process" to govern ourselves. We have committees that are facilitated by a chair or co-chairs. There is always an agenda at our meetings, and those wishing to have items on the agenda can submit them to the chair. The primary committee is the Steering Committee. We also have working committees like Communications, Fundraising, and Events.

All meetings are open to the public. We usually have a general progress report meeting once a year, where the various committees can share what they have been doing and what their needs are. We have had many successful Action Planning Days, where the members and interested people associated with the TCGN meet and discuss the future of the Toronto Community Garden Network. In November of 2009 we had such a meeting at The Stop's Green Barn, located at 601 Christie Street. We had a review of TCGN’s strategic planning to date including TCGN’s vision, mission statement, operations, and the strategic goals that have been decided upon over the last 12 months. We discussed our Sustainable Organizational Management Model and Volunteer Management Model. We also discussed issues like ethnic and geographical diversity.

.

Ethnic Diversity

To increase the ethnic diversity of our membership we realized that we need translators for our manuals, and that we need to promote TCGN through the ethnic media. Gardening is sometimes seen as an activity where language barriers are not a problem. For example people can use gestures to communicate. TCGN's role is more about networking, and in order to reach diverse communities we need to use a variety of languages in our material. TCGN is also sometimes able to source ethnic seeds.

.

Geographical Diversity

To support our geographical diversity, we are aiming to have a TCGN volunteer in each ward of the city (perhaps starting with the four regions of the city - north, south, east and west). Each volunteer would create relationships with the counselors of the area, and lead the organizing of events for community gardeners including Seedy Saturdays, tours, potlucks, etc. This would enable the TCGN to provide consultations to area community gardens and gardeners. This would also help support the start up of new community gardens, including the community consultation process, and would facilitate access to resources within each ward and neighbourhood.

.

We invite you to join the Toronto Community Garden Network as we grow here in the heart of the City, growing food and flowers, growing in communities, and growing into the future.

For more information please contact mail@tcgn.

hosted by parkcommons.ca | powered by pmwiki-2.2.0
Content last modified on February 02, 2010, at 03:13 PM EST