Urban Garden Project

About the Urban Garden Project

We focus on grassroots activities and look to support projects that are created within their own communities. We have various resources on offer: folks to facilitate workshops, spontaneous garden resources and supplies, or just an extra pair of hands if that’s what would help you or your community most. We run several programs, which include:

Growing Our Gardens

If your community centre, school, or organization is looking to start a collective garden site, we can come and meet with you to help you get started. We are able to offer skill building workshops and help you gather gardening materials to help get growing.

Some workshop ideas we have are:

Seasonal Gardening: What to do When
How to keep your soil healthy and have a productive garden
Rain catchment systems
Worm composting in your kitchen
Building a compost system for your garden
Container gardening: For your back step, your balcony or roof
Gardening in Small Spaces
Any questions you have or skills you’re looking for

If you are starting a new community-run garden or are looking for some new skills or inspiration let us know, maybe we can help.

School Garden Matchmaker

The Matchmaker program helps us connect interested community volunteers with local school gardens in need of a few extra hands. We find volunteers who would like to help with a garden and match them to a nearby school to help with summer weeding and watering. For volunteers looking to get their hands dirty, or for schools in need of some extra help, this is the project for you! Please contact us and let us know you are interested.

Community Garden Heavy Metal Study

The Urban Garden Project collaborated with the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, Halifax Regional Municipality, Environment Canada, and the Nova Scotia Environmental Network to conduct a heavy metal study in city gardens and public parks. It's an exciting project that has helped us to understand the potential health risks of working in urban soils and start developing simple strategies to mitigate these risks. Here's a link to the study and our recommendations to gardeners working in contaminated sites, as well as a zine about knowing and loving your soil.

Community Garden Heavy Metal Soil Contamination Study [1.5 MB]
Recommendations to gardeners [125 KB]
Build Me Up Buttercup : Knowing and Loving Your Soil [400 KB]

Good Seed

Good Seed accepts donations of garden related materials from businesses and the general public which are then distributed to individuals, and community groups who would like to start a garden but do not have the funds or materials available to do so. The aim is to reduce waste by collecting unused goods, and to encourage urban gardening in general.

Good Seed accepts donations of the following items:

Seeds and vegetable starts
Gardening tools, pots and trays, gardening gloves, twine, etc.
Potting soil, and compost
Rain barrels
Worm composting supplies

Items can be arranged to be picked up or dropped off at the Ecology Action Centre. Please contact us if you have items to donate.

Donations will support urban agriculture in HRM and will be distributed to individuals and communities in need through Good Seed and the Ecology Action Centre’s Urban Garden Project.

Volunteer with the Urban Garden Project

We’re here to support the community and to nurture garden projects, urban farms, build our communities’ capacity and people interested in growing food overall. We are always looking for extra hands and hearts, so if you’d like to help out, please get in touch!

Staying in Touch

If you would like to find a community garden near you or attend a public workshop, take a look at the Halifax Garden Network website (www.HalifaxGardenNetwork.com), a resource for all gardeners in HRM. The website features a map of gardens in the city, a calendar of events and a blog.

Garity Chapman
Urban Garden Project Coordinator
Email
(902) 442 1077