FSJ Community Gardens - Promoting Healthy Living in the City
EDITORIAL
Remember during Covid when many people in the Fort St. John area planted gardens for the first time? Or expanded their existing gardens? Not only did it give us something to do, when our places of work were closed, as well as an excuse to spend time outside, but a lot of us feared there would be food shortages, due to the disruptions caused by Covid. Since then, while many of the anticipated disruptions didn’t happen, the prices of everything from broccoli to butter to eggs have skyrocketed. People are continuing to explore options to ensure their food security.
Even before Covid, residents of the Fort St. John area have been proactive in their efforts to ensure food security, or at least increase the availability of fresh, local organic produce. There have been community gardens in the City since the late 1990s – the forerunner of our current 50 raised beds in the centre of town, was a few plots behind Northern Lights College near the Community Forest.
In recent years, the City, in conjunction with NEAT and other organisations, has been a leader in creating areas of both community garden plots, and food scaping. For example, City Hall has had vegetables planted in its gardens for several years now.
School District 60 has also gotten involved, with a number of elementary schools sporting raised beds, and some schools, such as Bert Bowes, even have tower gardens in various classrooms, filled with plants, planted by the students.
But now, some of that food security is threatened. Since the closure of NEAT in Fort St. John late in 2022, there is no one to manage the Community Gardens. The Catholic Church, which owns the land the gardens are on, is willing to work with an organisation to ensure the future of the gardens, which judging by its expansion over the last 20+ years, is of great value to the community at large.
There is a town hall meeting scheduled for the Festival Plaza in Centennial Park at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 5th to explore options to keep the gardens running. Judging by the beauty of many of the residential gardens in Fort St. John, there is a wealth of horticultural knowledge out there. Knowledge which could benefit of the entire community, through supporting and managing the Community Gardens. It would be a shame to see this facility disappear, denying those without space at home the opportunity to grow vegetables. For not only does gardening provide people with the benefits of improved nutrition and food security, but gardening is actually an excellent activity for improving physical and mental health overall. My grandfather was still gardening in his 90s – not just for the vegetables, but for the peace of mind and joy that being in his garden brought him. Who wouldn’t want that opportunity available in their community?