Garden flourished first year

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Miziwe Biik Aboriginal Employment and Training, along with representatives from Evergreen Foundation, Foodshare, and the Toronto Food Policy Council, celebrated the Miziwe Biik garden's first harvest festival on Oct. 8, an event that attracted about 75 people.

Myles Migwans walked along the community garden that he designed and planted on the grounds of Miziwe Biik, a garden that marked a new venture for him. He pointed out where woodland strawberries, sage, sweetgrass and nicotiana had grown in a wave formation over the edge of the sidewalk in the height of the summer growing phase.

Migwans, an Ojibwa from Manitoulin Island, has made Toronto his home for 10 years. Since June, he has worked as a site co-ordinator for the Evergreen Foundation, a national charitable organization that strives to "bring nature to the cities," through programs to naturalize public spaces, school grounds, and homes.

Miziwe Biik helped Myles to find his job.

"Miziwe Biik has good resources. It's an excellent place." Migwans added he "only sees good things coming out of this place."

The garden starts in front of Miziwe Biik's office on the corner of Gerrard Street East and Pembroke Street, and continues along the east side of the building. Migwans explained that he used the wave formation, "to suggest a ripple effect." The water theme continued in the main garden, where four raised beds surround a barrel filled with herbs. He described it as "a stone dropped in the centre of a pool of water." The design complements the name Miziwe Biik, which refers to a female water spirit. On the east wall of the building, overlooking the garden, Migwans indicated another feature that was installed last spring: a large mural by artist Joseph Sagaj.

Migwans sought advice from Elders, and he drew on his own knowledge and experience in landscaping this project. He looked for the "best light and best growing conditions." The garden was created with "no pesticides, totally organic-everything grows much healthier."

This summer, marigolds bloomed among the Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash), and you could find prairie smoke, slender vervain, chives and wild columbine, which is native to the Don River watershed. Migwans found people had an interest in native plants and traditional planting.

"People want just native plants that were already here in Ontario."

Migwans added that "It took about two months to organize, dig, and raise the beds."

He planted everything except potatoes. Foodshare, a Toronto-based non-profit organization, supplied organic vegetable plants.

Now it is autumn, Migwans has closed up the garden, having turned it over and mulched it.

Next year, he plans "more corn, more vegetables. There were a lot this year, but there could be a lot more."

In its first year, the garden created its own "ripple effect."

Volunteers from the community and other Aboriginal organizations, such as Council Fire, met Tuesday evenings to tend it. Migwans found "everyone is more community-oriented when there's a garden" and he met a lot of people. "It's a good way to get together.

"The whole community changed. The garden inspired a lot of interest and questions, on how to start up a garden, keep it going, and (it brought) volunteers.

"Evergreen wants to see more Aboriginal gardens."

Evergreen initiated a speaker's series at Miziwe Biik this fall. On Oct. 15, Foodshare's Laura Berman spoke about urban agriculture, food security and community gardens.

"The current model of farming is a huge monoculture," she said. "The earth is the source of our food, and without taking care of the earth, we will have no food."

She said Toronto is the first city in Canada to have a food charter; it also has more than 100 community gardens, adding about 10 a year.

Growing food close to home, as in the Miziwe Biik project, is a chance to "learn marketable skills" while "working together to achieve something," said Berman. "Just looking at plants-even pictures of plnts-can decrease your blood pressure."

Ken Parker from Sweetgrass Nurseries did a presentation about native plants and Aboriginal traditions on Oct. 29, and a presentation linking diet and lifestyle with diabetes prevention was delivered by a speaker from the friendship centre on Nov. 5. Chef David Wolfman (from APTN television's Cooking with Wolfman show) was scheduled to explain easy, nutritious food preparation in the final talk of the series on Nov. 12.