Community Garden
Wasaga Beach Community Garden
Community gardens are places where people come together to grow fresh food, to learn, relax and make new friends. Community gardeners know that sharing land to grow food and other plants builds a sense of place and community.
The benefits of the community garden include:
· easy access to fresh, nutritious food
· a sense of achievement that comes through growing some of your own food needs
· making friends with people in the neighborhood learning the skills of gardening, shared decision making and cooperation, all of which are necessary to successful community gardens
· healthy outdoor exercise
· participating in a constructive and productive recreational activity
· Improving the local environment.
In December 2011, Development Committee of the Town received a report from the Healthy Community Network (HCN) outlining their goals for 2012. One of these goals proposed that the HCN, "In collaboration with the Parks, Facilities and Recreation Department explore the feasibility of implementing a Municipal Community Gardens Project." This goal is consistent with recommendations in the recently completed Parks, Facilities and Recreation Master Plan.
In February of 2012, a Community Gardens Committee was established comprising representatives from the Parks Facilities and Recreation Department (3 members), the HCN (3 members), the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit (2 members), the South Georgian Bay Community Health Centre (1 member) and nine local residents, including six members of the Wasaga Beach Garden Club.
The objective of the project is to provide the opportunity for local residents to have access to fresh, healthy food and to provide a forum where they can learn basic gardening skills. The Committee hopes that armed with the experience of growing their own food, the participants will be motivated to create vegetable gardens in their own backyards and encourage their neighbors to do the same. In this way, the project has the potential, over time, to create many converts to the "grow local" philosophy who can benefit from the advantages which growing local, healthy food can bring.
The community garden has been approved as a two year pilot project for the Town of Wasaga Beach. The 2013 growing season has all 52 individual plots planted by multiple community organizations and residents. Many of the gardeners are donating all of the produce from their plots to the local food bank in Wasaga Beach. In addition there are 7 plots being grown by the YMCA and the South Georgian Bay Community Health Center for food skills programming and youth engagement.
For more information, please contact
Peter Wilmott at willmottp@sympatico.ca
If you are interested in applying for a plot please click the link after the photos below to download the application form.
