It didn’t happen overnight, but the planned revival of a community garden in Otterburn Park is finally starting to bear fruit.
“We basically had a neglected garden with brush and trees and it had been let go for a few years,” said Brian Peddar, the Riverside School Board employee behind the project.
Peddar and others cleared an abandoned stretch of land behind Mountainview School that once had served as a community garden.
They put two elevated box planters in the garden for seniors last year and two more this year. The garden abuts a senior home and the Mountainview School.
The garden can now accommodate about 80 plants. Both seniors and Grade 2 students at Mountainview grow food to benefit a local food bank.
When Global News visited the site, people were planting garlic, strawberries, leeks and yellow beans.
“It is a bit of a responsibility,” said Brenda Coleman, a Grade 2 teacher at the school.
“I have watering teams, so each week there was a watering team of two or three children.”
With summer on the horizon, the school year is nearly done.
Peddar said the Grain d’Sel food bank will take over the crops later in order to make sure the seeds started by the students go to the disadvantaged.