I got the idea for this project during the Easter break when I was home in Granby. I was walking through the family’s health food store when I saw organic seeds for edible flowers and vegetables. I thought that it was quite a good idea and decided to bring some back to Montreal with me. My best friend on Vancouver Island has a green house and grows fresh fruits and vegetables all year around. Unfortunately, it is not possible for me to do so in Montreal where there is barely any space available. I suddenly remembered seeing a presentation in class about rooftop gardening, and I asked myself why anyone should “travel thousands of miles [to get what they] could [...] produce within a 50-mile radius�? (Norberg-Hodge, Helena, 1996, p. 428). I went online and saw the website of “Our edible garden,�? and, thinking it was a brilliant idea, I decided to base my taking action project on this amazing initiative. I found the website helpful and easy to follow, as they provided a clear and concise guide on how to create your own rooftop garden.

I do not feel a very strong sense of community in the building where I live; it is quite impersonal and nobody knows anybody else well. Local communities were emphasized in class, and I felt that by living in Montreal I was missing something important in my life. The city is, for the most part, an impersonal environment where people don’t care a great deal about the others around them. I decided to take action on this matter, combining the idea of organic gardening with my will to create a more personal environment in my building. I thought that by coupling these two aspects I could help people connect with each other, while also contributing to something good.

This initiative would also support voluntary simplicity in three essential ways. First of all, it strives to alter consumption patterns in favor of durable, non-polluting products. Secondly, it promotes people to recycling wasteful items whose productions are damaging to the planet. Lastly, it would promote “smaller scale, more human-sized living and working environments that foster a sense of community, face-to-face contact, and mutual caring�? (Elgin, Duane, p. 439).

It is on this premise that I went knocking on each and everyone’s door in my building, feeling confident about my project, but at the same time, slightly scared about disturbing strangers who might think I was some kind of nut. I was happy to get a positive response from about half of the tenants in my building, which contains eight apartments and about 24 people. My building is right downtown and everybody has access to the roof. In our current society, “the environmental demands of our economic system now fill the available environmental space of the planet�? (Korten, Davic C., 2000, p. 184). With that perspective in mind, I thought I would undertake a project that would profit from the unused space in our building and concurrently help to filter Montreal’s polluted air through green plants.

Since “people have become disconnected from the cycles that support their lives, having little knowledge of where their food is grown, how it is cultivated, or how nutritious it is�? (Hill, Alex & Rabinowicz, Jane, p. 1), I felt that it was important to start by sharing my concerns about this issue to the people living in my building. I was happy to discover that many people were thinking the same way and were thrilled by the idea of creating a community garden. Others, however, were more reluctant or not interested at all. Doing this was a good way to overcome my fear of meeting strangers and I already feel more comfortable walking up the stairs to my apartment, which is on the top floor. About seven people joined me and I gave them each a few different kinds of organic seeds which will grow into herbs, flowers, and vegetables. Each person is supposed to start germinating the seeds in their apartment before bringing them outside to the roof when the weather is more clement. I am quite happy to see the interest in my building and I feel that this project is going to give us a chance to socially interact with one another while fostering a sense of a community within the building.

We also talked about creating a community compost on the roof where we could dispose of our organic “waste�? in an environmentally friendly manner. Many people wanted to compost but they did not have enough space in their own apartments. I was acting on the idea that we should seek not only to “reduce waste but eliminate the very concept of waste�? (Lovins, A.B. et al., 1999, p. 254). By implementing a compost program we can break out of the current wasteful cycle where not enough is reused; this new system will allow us to create a new cycle where nothing is squandered. We would use what was formerly considered to be “waste�? as a way to help us grow new food and therefore create a new sustainable life cycle.

Promoting organic gardening made me feel good about myself. I felt that for once I was doing something that was not only useful for myself, but also good for the community and for the environment. It is a great feeling and I am looking forward to seeing how the project develops this summer. After starting the project with the tenants of my building, I relayed the ideas of the project to my girlfriend, an environment student at McGill. She thought it was a fantastic idea and wanted to do it in her own building which is also downtown. I got more seeds from my parents’ store and went with her to promote the project in her building. People there seemed to be even more open to the idea of harvesting fresh organic plants throughout the summer. It might have been because the people in her building have lived there for a longer period of time and there was a fuller sense of community.

Researching this project, I came across an interesting concept that put things back into perspective for me: the biomass pyramid (Prentiss, Dylan, 2000, p. 32). I was shocked to find how much mass is needed to feed carnivores: going from one level of the pyramid to the next is extremely inefficient, as only 10% of the energy gets transferred. In simple terms, we would get only 1% of the mass of grass eaten by a cow while we could get 10% of it if we would cut the intermediary. If everyone ate only from the bottom of the pyramid there would be more than enough food for everyone in the world. Reflecting on this concept and my project, I felt that I would be creating a large amount of food this summer with the gardening but I would offset it by eating meat. I would be a hypocrite if I did such a thing, and therefore I decided to become a vegetarian this summer along with my girlfriend, who has been a vegetarian all her live. It will be challenging for me but I am ready for it. Depending on how I feel after the experience, I will see which eating habit I will choose to pursue at the end of the summer.

This was an enriching experience all around that made me reflect on my connection with the environment and develop a sense of community. I discovered many things about myself and became less selfish in the process. I am looking forward to eating fresh organic produce from our community garden. It is only an attempt and it might not work, but at least we gave it our best shot. Even if the garden does not prove to be a success in terms of the food we produce, it has already triumphed in one area by bringing people together and creating a stronger sense of community.

by
Alexandre Guertin
April 9th, 2005

References:

Korten, David C., “Sustainability and the Global Economy�?, in Coward H. and Maguire D. C. (Eds.). Visions of a New Earth: Religious Perspectives on Population, Consumption and Ecology Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000, p. 182.

Lovins, A.B. et al., “A Road Map for Natural Capitalism�?, Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1999, p. 254.

Norberg-Hodge, Helena, “Shifting Direction: From Global Dependence To Local Interdependence�?, in The Case Against the Global Economy, Maner, J. and Goldsmith E., eds., Sierra Club Books, San Francisco, 1996, p. 428.

Elgin, Duane, Voluntary Simplicity and the New Global Challenge, http://www.awakeningearth.org/AwakeningEarth_book.html

Prentiss, Dylan, “The Energy flow between levels�?, Department of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2000, p. 32.
http://earth.rice.edu/mtpe/bio/biosphere/topics/energy/40_biomass.html

Hill, Alex & Rabinowicz, Jane, “The Santropol Roulant & Alternatives Rooftop Garden: Reflections on an Innovative Collaboration�?, Recipes for Success, p. 1.

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Posté par mthom le Mer, 24/05/2006 - 1:20pm.