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Montreal Community Gardens
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To truly appreciate a visit to Montreal’s community gardens, one should understand the role they play in the lives of many immigrant groups. In fact, the community garden program was created as a reaction to the guerilla gardening of Portuguese and Italian immigrants growing food in vacant lots in the early 1970s. (Thom) The city began to regulate these activities, and developed a program to establish and maintain community gardens in 1985. Immigrant and poorer sectors of the population, many of which do not have private gardens, are likely to benefit from community gardens. Many immigrants grow food staples from their home country that are in limited supply and expensive to buy in Montreal. Poorer people tend to grow more food, as opposed to flowers, and rotate their crops more frequently to generate greater yields. Additionally, the gardens are an arena for socio-economic integration of recent immigrants and poorer groups. Instances of cross-cultural exchanges take place in the gardens, such as the sharing of growing secrets between groups. (Bhatt) The gardens help to build communities of peoples that cross cultural, ethnic, and even linguistic lines through the process of people coming together to work toward a common goal of maintaining and developing the gardens. They help to break social isolation of groups by providing a place where peoples of different backgrounds come together to form a single community. It can help recent immigrants, especially those from rural areas who have few connections, to meet their neighbours, and lead to more connected social networks throughout the city. (cite)
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