Seymour Green collective garden ahead of the local food trend

David Parker picks tomatoes at Dalhousie University’s Seymour Green garden, one of a growing number of communal gardens that boost local food production in Halifax. (Credit: Monika Warzecha)

David Parker believes knowing how to grow food in your own backyard is becoming a necessary skill.

"Local food needs to be a viable alternative to global food. Food that's imported from other continents - that's going to be increasingly unrealistic in a world after peak oil."

Parker, news coordinator for Dalhousie University's radio station CKDU, became part of the school's Seymour Green collective organic garden this summer.

Located on campus behind Demille House, at 1411 Seymour St., the garden has been ground zero for teaching people both inside and outside the Dalhousie community about the connection between food production and the environment.
The garden is a small shady spot and it's easy to miss the tomatoes, broccoli, beans, kale and cauliflower. The collective gathers Tuesdays after 6 p.m. to work on the garden and, during the summer, Thursday evening workshops focused on edible weeds, container gardening and worm composting.

The Seymour Green collective is one of several community-based gardens in Halifax that is putting the local food movement into action.

In May 2008 the Imagine Bloomfield Community Centre established a garden on Agricola Street in Halifax. And last spring, the Goodness Grows! Dartmouth Gardening Association broke ground for one at Dartmouth's Findlay Community Centre.

Seymour Green's roots go to back to 1996, when volunteers at the Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group started the garden.

It attracts people from outside Dalhousie. Tanya James, a fourth-year nutrition student at Mount St. Vincent University found out about it through the Halifax Garden Network's online forum.

James' interest in environmental issues led her to a look at her own food choices. She became a vegetarian five years ago, out of concern for the resources that go into meat production, and started growing her own herbs and vegetables.

"You don't really know what goes into anything if it's mass-produced."
Aside from having a closer relationship with what you eat, growing food closer to home can also cut down on the fossil fuels used to ship it across the continent to the grocery store shelf.

Jayme Melrose, Seymour Green's garden coordinator in 2007 and 2008, says more people have become interested in gardening and food in the past few years.

Melrose says she went into business this summer as a "garden doula," helping people "birth their gardens." Melrose helps people get their gardens started or manage existing plots through a landscape design business called The Local Gardeners.

"The people who contact me have some kind of environmental ethic, have some kind of food ethic, and want to be gardeners," Melrose says.

Parker believes collective and community gardens can turn food ethics into action and change how we eat.

"I met wonderful people and learned some really cool skills that I probably wouldn't be able to reproduce alone," he says.

"Working in a team, in a community, you really can grow some revolution."

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