Posted by Teresa Cheng in fruit and vegetables, grow your own on July 9, 2008 at 7:35 am

It all started with a small parsley plant a little girl grew in a cup. That little parsley plant was the foreshadowing of a community garden plot, a thriving rooftop garden and a head full of gardening knowledge. And that little girl was Gayla Trail, now an urban gardening advocate, crafty gal, and author of the popular gardening and project book, You Grow Girl: The Groundbreaking Guide to Gardening. Earning quite a big name in the local gardening scene, Trail was asked to talk about several issues such as the ways an urban Torontonian can start gardening, the benefits of community gardening, and whether or not she thought the rise of interest in sustainability was just a trend.

With summer finally starting to warm up and gardens flourishing, it’s hard to suppress the urge of wanting to have a garden of one's own. However, even with an urge that is so passionate, gardening can be daunting and scary. What might be a really modest front yard can seem like a vast expanse of land to beginners. Where to start, then? How to start? Rather than doling out strict rules on how to start a garden, Trail dispels some myths and provides some words of inspiration instead.

She turns the bogus idea of “real” gardening as being done only in yards on its head when she says, “If you have any outdoor space, you can pretty much do anything. Even if you didn’t have outdoor space, but have a sunny indoor spot, you can grow lettuce greens.” Trail is a firm believer that anyone can garden. She is an advocate of container gardening, a type of gardening that seems to be more feasible for urban folks. The greatest benefit of gardening in containers is the “ability to move the containers to wherever the light is.” That quality alone has her pushing container growing on those with shady or partly-shaded yards. “People with yards don’t think to use containers.” Trail’s biggest concern for beginners is making sure that containers are deep and/or wide enough for the different types of roots to grow into. Another warning she has is the much faster rate at which soil dries out in containers, as opposed to ground soil. This means container gardens need more time and attention.

With all that said, Trail’s most valuable piece of advice was this: “there are no fast and hard rules with gardening. A lot of it is about experience and intuition.”

Another way to start one’s own garden is by joining a community garden. The benefits of planting in a community garden are bountiful. However, Trail does point out that “it’s not all positive. Community building isn’t easy. A lot of the hardship is about learning to work with others.” It’s hard to deny the great things that can come out of community gardening, though. “It’s a group of people coming together to work and tend a space. It’s a bunch of people who want to be inspired by others because it’s hard to do something that you love so much alone. Community gardening is not an insolated experience.” This type of learning, building and growing is, she says, “really outside our North American mentality of ownership. It breaks down the singular ‘I’ model that many people operate within.” All in all, community gardening provides “excitement, learning and resource sharing.” So, then, how real is all of this sustainability, growing and community hoopla? Is the interest in greening one’s life a true and organic movement?

There is no denying the surge of interest in the recent past in sustainability, eating locally and growing one’s own food. “The intense interest must have started in the last couple of years, with last year more so than ever. Being interested in these kinds of issues used to be thought of as something only self-righteous hippie types did.” It’s crucial to remember that various groups of people with different racial, class and age backgrounds have been growing out of tradition, with knowledge that has passed through the generations, as ways of survival, way before mainstream media and more privileged folks have taken interest.

When asked if she thought the interest was just a trend, Trail replied, “I hope not. For some people, it definitely is, especially within a culture that has a short attention span.” At the same time, she is hopeful and thinks “once you take a step into sustainability and that type of thinking and living, it’s hard to step back. Plus, gardening takes commitment. Once you’re in, you’re in. It’s also very addictive.” Gardening is, indeed, addictive, but to be able to get to that point of addiction, a person needs to be able to access this movement.

The issue of accessibility is often overlooked when discussing issues of urban agriculture and more sustainable lifestyles. Specifically, questions like “Is urban agriculture accessible to those who aren’t young, able-bodied and don’t have spare time on their hands?” are not asked. Trail dispels the myth of urban growers as only white, young, middle-class and able-bodied by sharing the experiences she has had at her book launches and events. “I was shocked by my audience. There were people coming from all sorts of backgrounds, which really taught me about my own prejudices.” One area of gardening the author sees as inaccessible is the way gardening used to be touted as – “always needing things, needing to buy, needing money…all for the perfect, pristine garden.” She goes on to say, "What that kind of attitude and approach is saying over and over again is that gardening is not for you; you don’t belong here.” And that attitude is what Trail is trying to undo with her gardening activism . Bringing inspiration closer to home, she reminds us, “some of the most beautiful gardens are the ones in the Chinatown area, with the most amazing contraptions made from scraps of junk.” And that’s what gardening should be all about – accessibility, sharing, inspiring, learning, and finally, community.