One thing we don’t often talk about when we talk development in our communities is garden space.
We quite rightly talk about affordability, walkability and location. Even parking looms large in discussions about infilling with multi-storey, multi-family housing. But we don’t tend to talk about the outdoors as a space where people will be spending any length of time, merely as somewhere they are moving through to get from one indoor environment to another. Sometimes developments don’t even include a postage stamp balcony.
And yet we know that green space provides immense benefits, both physical and psychological. Trees create our most desirable neighbourhoods, their shade an excellent way to cool us down in the increasingly hot summers. Spending time in nature has been shown to lower stress and reduce depression and anxiety.
To this we’d also add the many benefits that can come from the ability to grow some of your own food. Discussion of including a community garden of some kind with a development is almost never done. And that’s a real shame.
Community garden plots are snapped up in Cowichan, where they exist. But it would be even more desirable if you just had to go out the front door of your apartment or condo building and head to your garden plot on the property.
Not only are the fruits and veggies you can plant at their most nutritious when just picked, you can also save a significant amount of money by growing them yourself, particularly if you do it from seed. The Cowichan library in Duncan even has a seed library you can get seed from for free. We talk about the need for affordable housing, which is dire, and we’d argue this is part of it. Growing some tomatoes, beans, potatoes, squash, peas, carrots, beats, blueberries, strawberries, herbs and more can radically improve your diet and your grocery bill at the same time.
When you look at even old city lots in most of our communities you will usually find at least a couple of old fruit trees, which would probably have been accompanied by a veggie and herb garden. There’s very good reason for that: people knew the value of growing their own food (and how to preserve it, but that’s another topic).
We need to start including these kinds of outdoor amenities, which would not cost developers much, when our local governments assess new projects. If we begin to demand that they be baked in, we bet there wouldn’t be much, if any pushback. And people might just be surprised by how much of a draw they are.