Published by City Farmer, Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture
EYA Urban Agriculture in Vancouver
Environmental Youth Alliance
Prepared by Hartley Rosen
Coordinator, Environmental Youth Alliance
604.689.4446
hartley@eya.ca
EYA Youth Garden
Located in the Cottonwood Community Garden, EYA's Youth Garden provides an important green space in a densely populated area of the city where few local youth have access to the natural environment. For over ten years EYA has worked alongside communty mentors, training young people in organic food production, seed saving, and plant propagation as a means to self sufficiency and career development in the environmental sector. The Youth Garden is a true opportunity for youth gain meaningful employment experience and steward the land, building community along the way.
Growing Kids
Growing Kids aims to educate children about organic gardening and the importance of local food production. EYA youth interns facilitate interactive, educational workshops, in inner city school classrooms, enabling kids to create school food gardens, while raising awareness of food and nutrition issues at the local and global scale. Growing Kids incorporates provincialcurriculum learning outcomes, and at the same time, provides a fun learning experience for young gardeners.
Project funded by: HRSDC, The Vancouver Foundation, and VanCity
Community Plant and Seed Nursery
A Joint Initiative of the Strathcona Community Gardeners Association & EYA to make our cities more habitable for all the earth's species (cities need birds and bugs too!) we need more plants, a lot more! The city suffers from pollution, heat exhaustion, and a lack of habitat something that plants can do something about! Plants take in CO2 and release oxygen, as well they have a cooling effect on our landscape, and provide food and shelter for all sorts of animals & insects. However, sources of plant material in the city are rare, especially in low-income communities. EYA youth worked with the Strathcona Community Garden Association to build a Community Nursery so plant material will be more readily available for local urban agriculture projects. Phase one of the project involved the construction of a lockup nursery building in order to securely store plant material and supplies. Phase two was the development of a native plant nursery with 37 different indigenous species that will serve as Ômother' plants, providing seed and vegetative material for plants that will eventually be used in future community greening initiatives.
Project funded by: Partners for Economic and Community Help, the United Way, The Vancouver Foundation, The Neighbourhood Matching Fund, & HRDC
Urban Seeds
For the past decade we have maintained the EYA Youth Garden at Cottonwood Community Gardens; growing food, propagating native plants, and sharing knowledge and information regarding food policy. In the last few years we have made a conscious effort to save our own seeds for replanting as well as distributing them within the community. With the continued amalgamation of seed companies, seed varieties that are best suited to the intensive small-scale home gardener are rapidly disappearing. We feel it is important to preserve these seeds, varieties that have been handed down and selected over thousands of years. Seeds grown for gardeners, by gardeners.
In 1999, our seeds became available in a number of stores throughout Vancouver. They are also available free, or at low cost to low income gardeners and local schools/community centres for their urban gardening endeavors.
Means of Production
The Means of Production attempts to address the distancing between the use of artists' materials and the resources from where they came, through a working model of sustainable inner-city forestry. It involves the production of valuable, organic artist materials such as paper, charcoal, and exotic wood, using permaculture (permanent agriculture) principles to provide the means for many artists to do their work in the future. Plantings of Black locust, Empress tree, Ash, osier willow, bamboo, Mulberry, and Hazel in North China Creek Park brings together local artists, youth groups, and community gardeners in a legacy project that revivifies our historical relationship towards the idea of community self-sufficiency that public use of land has traditionally allowed.
Project funded by: Community Arts Council of Vancouver (The Vancouver Foundation), HRDC, and the Vancouver Parks Board
Human Healing with Horticulture
Horticulure therapy is the use of plants and gardens for human healing and rehabilitation. In the past eight years ,EYA youth have worked with residents in the downtown eastside (Carnegie Centre, Portland Hotel, Covenant House) on several greening initiatives such as: rooftop gardens, medicinal plant workshops, hanging baskets, plant and seed giveaways, and composting demonstrations. Our goal is to connect residents with plants, bringing a sense of health, pride, and spirit to those who have little access to nature.
