A Walk in the Park by Kit Nash

I am lucky enough to live near one of Edmonton’s amazing community gardens. The Peace Garden Park is located on 120^th Street and 103^rd Avenue in Oliver. It is an oasis of green in a neighbourhood of high-density living.

I wandered over to talk to some gardeners about the garden and about the compost facilities. As you can see from the picture, the compost bin is near overflowing. It’s great that it’s getting used, but some gardeners, like Clayton and his dog Yakul, don’t know much about it.

Getting information out to gardeners is one of the challenges of any community project. Here, however, there are other challenges. Any compost bin needs to balance the greens with some browns. One of the gardeners, Sandra Anderson (and her dog, Susie) said that this compost bin was mostly greens due to all the weeding. So the compost does smell a little. Also, the water supply at the garden is intermittent. Unfortunately, the pump is currently broken. Gardeners make other arrangements to keep the compost at optimum moisture.

Overall though, the garden looks great, and it’s wonderful to see composting at Peace Garden Park. Compost happens! And the garden loves it!

If you helped with composting at a community garden, how did you solve challenges? What helps to communicate with gardeners?

_______________________________________________________________________

Kit Nash graduated from the Master Composter Recycler Program in 2011.