Cultivating a Social Ecology:

Voices From Community Gardens On Social Nature and

Environmental Justice

by

Chris Bisson

Faculty of Geography and Environmental Studies

Carleton University

1

Abstract

Community Gardens are spaces where certain ideas of society and nature come

together in ways that challenge conventional narratives of one another. Social ecology,

a school of thought focused on blurring the lines between the nature and people in

terms of justice and oppression, has primarily focused on materialist political economies

of cities (Carson, 1986). Recently the investigation of ontology have been introduced to

the field through poststructuralist theory, and community gardens provide a clear case

where the social constructs of discourse are important to understanding the nature-

societal dialectics of social ecology (Clark, 1997). Through a discourse analysis of

accounts given by community gardeners on their experiences gardening in Ottawa this

thesis shows that spaces such as community gardens, which are ultimately very limited

in their ability to radically alter the political economies of food production in cities, stand

as important spaces where more radical discourses on social ecology may occur.

These discourses are fundamentally important in building such movements as they act

as spaces for marginalized peoples to ontologically challenge their marginalization. As

written by bell hooks (2009), wilderness can become a place to challenge and resist

oppression. In the case of this thesis, community gardens provide an example of ways

in which other kinds of nature can produce similar effects.

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Table of Contents

Introduction ........................................................................................................ p.4

Theory: Place, Society, Nature and Discourse ................................................... p.7

Methodology ........................................................................................................ p.20

Methodological Structure ........................................................................ p.20

Research Area ................................................................................... p.24

Research Method ................................................................................... p.26

Critical Discourse Analysis ........................................................................ p.31

The Gardens .............................................................................................. p.33

An Environmental Materialist History of Ottawa ................................................... p.35

Early Resource Development .............................................................. p.35

Victory Gardens and World Wars I & II ................................................... p.38

Post-War Urban Growth and The Rise of Community Gardening ........ p.40

Social Justice & Nature: Discourses of Social Ecology ........................................ p.44

Community Gardens and Social Justice ................................................... p.44

Community Gardens and Nature/Environment ........................................ p.50

Social Nature and Community Gardens as Heterotopias .................. p.56

Conclusion ......................................................................................................... p.62

Bibliography ......................................................................................................... p.66

Appendix I: Interview Questions ............................................................................ p.73

Appendix II: Maps ............................................................................................... p.75

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Introduction

Community gardens assume many forms, and take various meanings for a

diverse number of people. They can resemble anything from centrally-owned rental plot

systems to communitarian guerrilla gardens on abandoned land. The American

Community Garden Association (n.p.) defines it simply as, “Any piece of land gardened

by a group of people”. They are places both profound in their conceptual simplicity as

well as their elaborate political implications. As places where peoples and groups are

actively engaged in the process of using land to produce their own food, community

gardening assumes the right of people to have economic determination over the use of

city space. The nature of this geographic emancipation is that it problematizes the

dominant normative discourses on food production, and nature and community in the

urban landscape. Such counter-hegemonic discourses aim at producing an ontological

basis of changing the materialist conditions of peoples and communities. This research

seeks to illustrate how such cultural forms of resistance produce landscapes where

people are empowered within their economies as well as a part of local ecologies.

The combination of social ecology and poststructuralist methods sets the task of

integrating the critical examination of ontological assumptions into the framework of a

radical environmental materialism. In line with the Marxist materialist tradition of

research, social ecologists have sought to analytically understand power through the

investigation of control over economic and political affairs of groups and peoples.

Poststructuralism on the other hand has approached an understanding of power

through the investigation of cultural meaning and the relationships they produce.

Though these two methodologies have been subject to heated contestation in the social

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sciences in the past century, the works of the past few decades have shown how the

two can be successfully merged in pursuit of an understanding of power, society and

nature.

In the case of urban food economies the goal was to understand the sorts of

meanings and relationships that inform economic behaviour surrounding grassroots

food production systems in city space (Bell & Valentine, 1997). I focused on a small

aspect of the greater food system of Ottawa, which is food production through

community gardening. I have chosen this small-scale food system in order to

understand the relationship between alternative discourses on nature and city space,

and the movement to resist economic and cultural hegemonies of food production.

Focus on small-scale systems is important because it is in these margins where

resistance can occur. Specifically this research has focused on discourses of economic

empowerment delivered through communication of Ottawa’s urban-natural landscapes.

In keeping with the dialectic logic of the social ecology method I have set out to find

discourses, which deconstruct binaries that divide the urban from the natural in the city

landscape as well as the social from the environmental in the political landscape.

The social ecology of Murray Bookchin (2004) proposes that the global

destruction of ecological systems, which create social systems of hierarchy and

exploitation, that subject groups and peoples to oppression through systems of

hierarchy and exploitation that subject groups and peoples to oppression. He also

assumes that the process can be reversed, that through the empowerment of groups

and peoples in their economic determination they can both resist oppression and live

harmoniously as a part of global ecological systems (ibid.). The space in which this

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empowerment can partially occur is within the particular construct of social nature found

within environmental justice. While this space is created discursively it is also

manifested physically in forms such as community gardens that contest the meaning of

society and nature in landscapes producing heterotopias.

In this thesis I also seek contextualize the current social and environmental

condition of Ottawa through a history that parallels Bookchin’s social ecology narrative.

Through a heritage of colonial resource extraction, World Wars, and intense

urbanization, this history of Ottawa demonstrates why there was a need for community

gardening in the production of social and environmental justice.

The overall goal of this thesis is to gain an understanding of how social justice

through economic and social empowerment may be driven through discourses of nature

and how environmental discourse can act as an avenue for social justice.

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Theory: Place, Society, Nature and Discourse

Social ecology as a theory is now entering a new phase since the death of

Murray Bookchin in 2006. With the introduction of poststructuralist theory, new themes

such as social construction, discourse and power, and othering are combined with

Marxist and anarchist theories of capital, social movements and hierarchy. In its

application to geography social ecology can be understood through the lens of space

and place through principles of landscape, heterotopia, and social nature.

Social ecology begins with an understanding of environmental justice. This form

of justice has had many different meanings since the idea emerged in 1982 as a social

movement in Warren County, North Carolina. At that time, lower-income and racialized

peoples were subjected to the construction of a toxic waste dump near their homes with

no democratic input (McGurty, 2000). Not merely a movement advocating equality in

environmental risks and benefits, it has come to represent the democratic participation

of diverse communities over the control of natural resources (Scholsberg, 2004).

Schools of thought such as social ecology suggest a political framework that

attempts to explain oppression and ecological destruction and restore environmental

justice. Fundamentally social ecology seeks to examine the place of human

communities in ecological systems. Rather than focusing solely on the role of state

policy and economic systems in relation to the natural environment as in political

ecology, it also examines the role human power relationships and hierarchies play in

the health of ecological systems (Clark, 1997). In social ecology the well being of

society and nature are dialectically united in order to understand how the nature of one

effects the other. This theory identifies ecological destruction in situations of social

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marginalization, and equally, social marginalization in instances of ecological

destruction (Light, 1998; 5 - 8).

The dialectic link between social oppression and ecological destruction are

evident in cases where imperialist, statist and capitalist projects are involved in

simultaneously producing both. One case is in the development of the Athabasca Tar

Sands where the pursuit of profits for industries and governments depends on the

dismantling and toxification of the natural landscape, which occurs at the same time as

the experience of displacement and poisoning by impoverished and racialized peoples

living in the vicinity. In some aspects, the oppression of these peoples are the direct

result of the pollution generated as in the leaching of mine tailings into the water system

and its impact on human health. In other ways they are not directly correlated but part

of the same process, such as the government’s issuing of land grants to multi-national

industries for profit simultaneous to the retraction of community health funding and

education programming in Original Nations’ communities (Polaris Institute, 2010).

Social ecology exists through the confluence of two evolving theoretical streams.

The first begins with the critical evaluation of neo-Malthusian biological and cultural

ecologies in the 1970s by political economists forming the project of political ecology to

understand how markets and state policies effect the environment (Page, 2003). The

second is found in the intellectual tradition of the communist and mutualist

libertarianism from the mid-nineteenth century works of Emile Proudhon, Peter

Kropotkin and Michael Bakhunin (Carson, 1986). Social ecology, in this case acts as a

continuation of political ecology project under the new objective of critically examining

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the role of all hierarchical power structures and its role in the dialectic ecology of society

and nature.

Murray Bookchin is the name most recognized in the field of social ecology for

his contribution to naming and defining the school of thought. His works have focused

primarily on understanding the organization of communities in the urban environment.

His most prominent work focuses on modelling a form of “municipal libertarianism”,

which suggests that highly democratic federated municipalities replace the role of the

state. In this eco-utopian system he advocates the collective and mutualist organization

of resources in urban areas (Bookchin, 1986 -a). Because of their role in economic and

social empowerment as well as ecological rehabilitation in cities community gardens

stand as a clear example of this framework applied to the organization of urban land.

The relevance of Bookchin’s work in the study of geography and political ecology

is something that has remained disturbingly under-appreciated. His anthology

discusses a vast array of critiques and innovations that are almost specifically

geographic in theme. From his work discussing the descaling of political representation

over space through his libertarian municipalism, to his historical materialism of the

development of urban landscapes Bookchin would certainly be considered a political

geographer in today’s departments (Bookchin, 1986 -b). The implications of his works

on resistance movements are also incredibly geographic in nature such as the Reclaim

the Streets Movement (Guardian, 2006), which is a clear case study in using landscape

discourse as resistance. He is also a pioneer of interdisciplinary studies, engaging in a

political ecology of urban communities far before the establishment of the field. He also

was an ground breaker for the environment movement, publishing his first book Our

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Synthetic Environment on the dangers of pesticide use in March 1962, before Rachel

Carson’s Silent Spring in September of 1962.

Despite his prolific success and influence in the fields of urban studies and

environmental ethics through his effective criticisms of biocentrism and ecocentrism,

Bookchin’s continued assertion of control over the direction of the field throughout his

life limited its application. Through powerful criticism of his contemporaries, social

ecology become stuck in the materialist tradition of thought (Light, 1998; 343 - 284).

Bookchin’s persistent neglect of feminist theory and alimentation other ecological

schools of thought leading social ecology to the margins of the social sciences (Carson,

1986).

Likely his most controversial stand was his unrelenting attack on all that he

considered to be “postmodernism”. Labelling all continental philosophy stemming from

Friedrich Nietzsche as “postmodern nihilism”, he has criticized the spectrum of theorists

that have challenged the objectivity of reason in epistemology as self-referential. He

claims that such arguments are dangerous and liberalist because of the supposedly

bleak unimportance it places on revolution and liberation. Though his critical works on

“postmodernism” show a deep and intriguingly novel insight on the genealogy of this

school of thought, it is unfortunate that he has disregarded all critiques of ontology

entirely. It may be true as he very effectively argues that Heideggerian and existentialist

postmodernism are specifically nihilist and anti-humanist in ways that have generated

complacency to oppression and has resulted in the subjection of peoples to unthinkable

acts of violence. He also criticizes the likes of Foucault, Lyotard and Derrida as the

basis of the failure of the New Left in the Paris student riots of 1968 because of their

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complete vagueness on alternative societal structures in the face of seemingly

inevitable cycles of power imbalance (Bookchin, 1995). However what Bookchin

neglects is the praxis that has been driven through the work of poststructuralists in

producing anti-oppressive and consensus decision making models. Poststructuralism in

practice has also produced the bases of a wide range of feminist and post-colonial

projects that tangibly challenge patriarchy and imperialism from a new cultural critique

that is often unproblematically combined with social movements aimed at resisting

capitalism and governments, and constructing alternative political economies.

Furthermore poststructuralism has acted as the vehicle to challenge the forms of

oppression that have been largely taken for granted in materialist discourse such as the

marginalization of the differently abled, gay/lesbian/bi/trans (GLBT) peoples and every

intersection produced in the connection of different oppressions (Dempsey & Rowe,

2004).

In the last decade this use of poststructuralism has become popular and

theorists have began re-evaluating the role other critical fields of social sciences in

social ecology. One need only look at the introduction of poststructuralism into political

ecology to see the appeal of opening up social ecology to what lays beyond

environmental materialism (Peet & Watts, 1996). However it is interesting to note just

how absolutely opposed both Bookchin and Foucault would have been to the use of

these two methodologies simultaneously. Bookchin opposed the supposed “nihilism” of

poststructuralism, and Foucault has said that in terms of nature: “My back is turned to

it” (Darier, 1999). It seems that this paper ventures into dangerous territory by mixing

the works of two thinkers.

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Before advancing any further in this mixing of theories Foucault’s

poststructuralism will need some explanation. Poststructuralism is essentially a study of

how power and relationships are negotiated over the contestation of meaning

(Murdoch, 2006; 4 -11). It holds great significance for the discipline of geography

because it acts as an effective tool for understanding how relationships are

communicated in space (Darrier, 1999). For Foucault power and knowledge are

inseparable, and whereas space as a concept is socially constructed it is always

subject to control and contestation through power/knowledge (Murdoch, 2006; 47 - 53).

Landscapes and topologies can then be seen as diverse sets of discourse competing

for meaning.

One important postsructuralist concept important to the field of geography is

heterotopology. In a lecture for architects in 1967 Foucault (2008) delivered a lecture on

what he called “Les Espace D’Autres” (Of Other Spaces). In this lecture he described

an ideal situation where sites are defined by their discursive contestation, which he calls

heterotopias. Heterotopias are places where the real and imagined are mixed. Space

and place exist both in tangible as well as imagined forms. One goes about in the world

constantly interacting and negotiating with material things forming the tangible

landscape we live in. As well one exists in an imagined sort of space were people are

able to act out ideas and ideals, articulate and understand their surroundings, and

dream and conceive of their next steps and actions in the material world.

Sometimes these two types of space can become confused or substituted. One

may switch a real place for an imagined and create a utopia (both “oú” = not a place,

and “εὖ”= good place) (Foucault, 2008). This is the sort of phenomenon that occurs

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where the experience of a place is internalized and coupled with an idealized value

(Soja,1996), similar to the meaning of Walden Pond to the worldviews of independence

and spiritual nature of Henry David Thoreau (1995). The utopia can also be a place that

has never been experienced but can mythologically be associated with a possible site

for a set of idealized values (Foucault, 2008), such as the Island Republic of Utopia in

Thomas More’s Utopia (Gallagher,1964). The possibility of different forms of utopias are

literally as infinitely versatile as the human mind can be, however what remains

important is that they symbolize an idealized set of values (or its perfect opposite:

“dystopia”), but they are fundamentally places that do not exist (Foucault, 2008).

Conversely, the opposite can occur. One can attempt to materialize an imagined

place in the material world. This is the first condition in the construction of what Michel

Foucault (2008) has described as “heterotopia” (“hetero” = other, “topia” = place). Such

places are equally as versatile as utopias because such places are essentially utopias

brought into creation in the material world. They can range from theatres, graveyards,

spas, museums, puritan colonies, prisons and importantly, gardens (Foucault, 2008;

Johnson, 2006; Raschig, 2007;). Edward Soja (1996; 145 - 163) suggests that Foucault

gave vague examples specifically to not limit its possibilities. Foucault describes

heterotopias as idealized places situated in the material world in ways that invert, distort

and reveal the meanings of the ideal place and the space around it. They are

supposedly places that are “perfectly other”, as in they are always outside convention

(Foucault, 2008).

Foucault and many of the authors who have written about and used his concept

of heterotopia have spent much time discussing how gardens are heterotopias, and

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form heterotopologies (Johnson, 2006; Soja,1996). Foucault describes a short history of

this heterotopia originating in the Persian empire both in the forms of groomed sections

of plants as well as intricate carpets (“winter garden”). Such gardens had a very

cosmological meaning; the edges and corners would represent the corners of the

known world and the inside would be an interpretation of how the world is ordered.

Such gardens did not resemble maps or literal representations of things found in space,

but the decorative patterns would indicate the sorts of harmonies and flows that were

an idealized cosmology of nature seen by its creator(s). In many ways it seems that

gardens have kept this quality in modern-Western society in ways that idealize the

politics of nature and society.

Gardens of various purposes are able to hold the wide ranges of presumptions of

the ones who create and interact with them. Gardens involve the culmination of values.

They are both microcosms of the way people see the world and macrocosms of the way

the world ought to be. They are places where people negotiate their relationships with

nature; furthermore they are places where people develop their ideas of what nature is.

Community gardens can alter the space around them and deconstruct the sorts

of normative assertions on the urban landscape. Bromley (2004) describes how public

gardening can liberate city space from rigid neo-liberal rules of access through private

property ownership. In Vancouver, one community demonstrated that they were able to

appropriate private land near their homes as a shared commons area through public

gardening. This community was able to create this form of collective property because

they could defend their use of the space simply by using it, rather than letting it sit as a

grassy plot privately owned by somebody outside the community.

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Another concept important to poststructuralism in geography is social nature

(Braun & Wainwright, 2001). The idea of nature can be a tremendous number of things

making it extremely difficult if not impossible to define. This is possibly because the

natural is subject greatly to perspective. It seems that throughout modern environmental

discourse, the central question of what is natural is best defined by what it is not. For

instance nature is not pollution, sprawl, or industry. Nature, it would seem in modernity

has been created through a dichotomous process, one that has been heavily binary and

based in power. Ideas of what nature is can be traced to traditional, religious and

governmentalized systems of values. Ultimately one has to negotiate what is natural in

order for there to be a nature, which reveals that nature is in fact a very social product.

After all, nothing that humans have described as nature has ever declared itself as

nature.

Nature, existing much by virtue of the language, and the literature that has

produced it, faces places that defy and bend its own definition. Places such as

brownfields, parks, jungles, farms, rubber forests and gardens are greatly liminal places

of overlap between these two realms of definition. Is nature only what is pristine? If this

is the case, how much human interaction is needed for it no longer to be nature? Can

places that are constructed by humans ever be nature? Or perhaps nature exists on a

temporal basis. Maybe some place that was once natural can be shaped and exploited

by humans into the non-natural. Then, after years of neglect it can be transformed back

into nature. Here the problematic of modern binary language is found. Where can we

draw the lines between modernity’s masterful and dominating definitions of things?

15

As discussed in Lormier (2008), nature often occurs in hybridity. In this idea

“Relational Geography ... nature-society, urban-rural are fluid, complex and emergent

from situated interactions and connections, rather than fixed as immutable essences.” It

is for this reason that ecosystems exist in the most urban of environments as well as

human-created materials being found in the most pristine of wildernesses. However this

is not to suggest that nature does not exist and the values constructed around it are

absolutely relative. There are certainly natures that experience less human activity

therefore more stable ecological systems, but it has been suggested as in Darrier

(1999), that environmental action that would ground itself in a perfected definition of

pristine nature would actually be very unsustainable. It would also be ignorant of the

histories of the World’s indigenous populations that have inhabited the vast majority of

the planet’s land surface.

It would seem that policies and actions prescribing absolute conservation and

protection could establish a hierarchy of exploitation which would privilege certain

natures over others to the detriment of ecological systems as a whole. It is critical to

recognize the sort of marginalization of humans such assumptions can produce. As

discussed by Beenash Jafri (2009), such natural absolutisms as in the “apocalypse talk”

prevailing widely in environmental movements have produced a sorts of “environmental

racism” that would see certain marginalized peoples exploited and abused for the sake

of saving the world from an impending ecological apocalypse. Murray Bookchin (2005)

has argued that ecological destruction ought to be mitigated for both anthropocentric

and ecocentric reasons, however the social reality must never be ignored in the

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creation of solutions, because such problems are absolutely socially produced. This is

what Beenash Jafri (2009) has described as protecting environmental justice.

It is then for the sake of environmental justice that discourses on the

environment be deconstructed in order to reveal different forms of social privilege and

oppression. It is the assumption of this research that the examination of discussion

surrounding nature can reveal oppressive assumptions implicit to environmental

discourse, propagating marginalization, privilege and hierarchical structures of power.

Quigley (1999) suggests that power creates nature out of ideology, and it is specifically

the powerful that aims to make what is principally cultural into nature. Engaging nature

in a libertarian socialist sense aims to establish a counter-hegemony within

environmental discourse to challenge presuppositions of privilege. Once such

assumptions are found it can then be possible to challenge environmental planning and

policy in order to mitigate its effects towards environmental justice.

Nature in this respect also becomes a place in discourse. Whereas ideas of what

is possible are influenced by the technologies of discipline in normative discourse,

nature by this alternative meaning can act as an “other” space. This space allows for

the construction of a place to subvert norms of gender, race, class, ability, age etc.

Agents and discourses marginalized through the normative assertions of urban

landscapes form what Derrida has called an “hauntology” (1994; 10). Those

systematically othered are allowed to come together at the margins, which constantly

threatens to destabilize the central ontology, in other words they haunt the dominant

paradigm with the fear of being overthrown.

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Bell hooks (2009; Soja, 1996: 83 - 105) wrote that one is able to confront one’s

marginalization when it is centred discursively. For instance when she writes about

growing up as a girl in an African-American community under segregation in Kentucky,

she notes that it was through her literature that she was able to confront her

marginalization. She illustrated the beauty of her home and family and the sentiment

that she attached to them, and was able to centre her home place as the core of the

landscape opposite to what the normative spatial discourse of the political class of the

Southern-States would have dictated. The power of upper-class white people to

privilege their places as the centre and the communities of African American poor as

other was challenged as people read bell hooks work and realized their agency to

determine what parts of landscapes are important and beautiful.

Community gardens act as such places. They are often sites left derelict or

fallow and are othered in the normative discourses of the city and capitalism. They are

places in such discourse that are not acceptable to be in and are associated with

people who do not behave “normally”. If these people were to use such spaces to

produce a counter narrative to the normative prescriptions of urban space they may

also be able to counter the process of their being othered.

Nature is also described as other in the urban narrative. If there are spaces that

grow plant-life that are abandoned and no longer used in the production of financial

wealth they are then called “brownfields”. Nature as a result of binary opposition of

urban discourse, is then wilderness untouched by humans. Community gardens

problematize these narratives because they demonstrate nature as both flourishing in

the city and incompatible to capitalist spatial norms.

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This paper then seeks to investigate assumptions at play in alternative

discourses of nature in urban space. Through the investigation of grassroots initiatives

such as community gardens, it will be possible to see what sorts of discursive natures

hold the capacity to act as inclusive spaces of environmental justice. This research will

reveal that community gardens incorporate assumptions about nature into an urban

spatial discourse of grassroots community organizing therefore creating the sort of

social ecology discussed by Murray Bookchin.

What is possible is to witness how the social ecological dialogue of nature in the

discourse of urban space can help to change the meaning of nature of other spaces

outside of the emplacements of grassroots action. Through the mechanisms of

heterotopia such spaces might hold the potential of forming a meaningful counter-

hegemonic dialogue in urban spatial discourse inviting people to challenge

environmentally unjust presuppositions in their surroundings. Put simply, if people

identify and internalize sites such as community gardens as places where

environmental justice takes place, they may look at other places such as public parks

and green spaces and ask why these spaces are not being used for justice, as opposed

to privilege.

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Methodology

In this research qualitative methods will be used to produce the sorts of detailed

and in-depth descriptions of personal experiences and interpretations necessary to

understand the sorts of meanings and relationships that are produced through

community gardening. Particularly this research will be structured around

poststructuralist and feminist methods of discourse analysis. For this to occur

effectively, it is important that in the description of the methodology I critically reflect on

my position as a researcher. Using this approach I hope to generate an in-depth and

meaningful interpretation of the ways community gardens can produce environmental

justice for its participants and surrounding community.

Methodological Structure

Inspired by the agricultural political ecology research of Melissa Miller on

community supported agriculture in Eastern Ontario (2008), this research aims to

investigate the socio-economic, historical and political factors that shape the community

garden experience in Ottawa. The poststructuralist philosophy of Foucault asserts that

all observation and knowledge is partial to “the truth”, which is ultimately shaped

through the power found in interpersonal relationships (Murdoch, 2006). Therefore what

is needed in addition to diverse and deep accounts of community gardening is an

elevated and critical awareness of power and representation found in the observation of

the researcher.

Feminist research methodologies advocate for a socially and politically active

hands-on research approach opting for the researcher to engage with issues as a part

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of the emancipatory process of the participants and communities they interact with. The

critical assumption of this “conciousness-raising” approach is that the social role of

research has traditionally been given exclusive access to those privileged through

patriarchy, race, class, ability, etc (Sarantakos, 2004). Therefore, this research takes

side with community gardeners in order to use the position of the researcher to provide

a participatory means of bringing alternative voices into the process of knowledge

production. As suggested by (Peet & Watts, 1996), rather than speaking for people by

simply producing a representation of the community garden experience in Ottawa, I

seek to speak with the sentiments of resistance I encounter in my experience with other

community gardeners.

My background in community gardening is fairly limited but very committed. As

both a social and ecological activist as well as a participant in a food service workers’

co-operative in Ottawa my interest in social justice and ecology are essential aspects of

my personal identity. Having a mother who was an avid gardener and a partner who

enjoyed a similar upbringing the influence of gardens in my life have been long-felt. This

coming spring will commence my second season of community gardening. Though the

practice is fairly new to me in the past year I have fully immersed myself in the

community garden world of Ottawa. Therefore I fully support the success of community

gardening in Ottawa, and my engagement in this research aims to elevate the

discourse of fellow community gardeners. The objective of this research is to

normatively produce a counter-hegemonic discourse in order further the cause of

community gardens in Ottawa.

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In this research, interviews were used to obtain the in-depth qualitative data

needed to conduct a discourse analysis. For the study, the use of uniquely quantitative

data would have proven ineffective and the sorts of data returned would have merely

described the nature and composition of the population involved in community gardens

thus reporting little about the experiences of individuals and groups. More efficient

methods of qualitative data collection such as surveys which may, on the other hand

return a greater number of respondents than more in-depth methods, are, on the other

hand restricted to the description of basic phenomenological trends and provide little

information about the social construction of such phenomenon (Kitchin & Tate, 2000).

Although group interviews with different participants of distinct garden projects

would have likely proven beneficial or even preferable by providing an opportunity to

study how they interact (Kitchin & Tate, 2000), efforts to contact gardeners and co-

ordinate discussion groups would have provided a logistical burden too great to

manage with real effectiveness. Such efforts would have undoubtedly been challenged

by the dispersal of gardeners away from garden communities during the winter months

when this research took place. In any case, I estimate that for the additional data that

may have resulted for analysis would only have been marginally better. A better

understanding of the relationships between gardeners may have generated an

understanding of the internal organization of community garden projects, however this

was beyond the means and focus of this research and may be a valuable topic for

further research.

This study may have been effectively conducted through ethnographic or

participatory/activist observation where the researcher is embedded as a group

22

member actively participating in the community while documenting their experience and

conducting interviews with other members (Kitchin & Tate, 2000). This would produce

the type of detailed observations pertaining to group member interactions as in group

interviews, however again due to time and resource limitations this method was not

selected.

In-depth personal interviews were chosen for this research because of the

possible compromise between efficiency and effectiveness of producing detailed

accounts of meanings and relationships (Kitchin & Tate, 2000). Personal interviews

allowed me to be more flexible in accommodating the research participant. I was able to

make contact with a participant and have them set a time and location around their

often very busy schedules and discuss their community garden experience for as long

as they wished. The use of semi-structured interviews allowed me to pose a variety of

questions from a predetermined list (Appendix I) and ensured the flexibility to ask

further questions and explore interesting topics in order to tease out information

specifically pertaining to meanings and relationships in their experiences. This method

also offered the opportunity for me to conduct the interview in a more conversational

and informal style, which enabled me to maintain an atmosphere of research

participation and solidarity necessary for this research to act as a platform to elevate

discourse (Sarantakos, 2004). A more constrictive methodology would jeopardize the

role of the researcher as a part of the movement by exacerbating the power dichotomy

and tension of the normative authoritative and masculine gaze, discussed as the

medical gaze by Foucault (1973).

23

Additionally in identifying primarily as part of the movement myself I am able to

alleviate some of the researcher-subject power relationship that would place the

researcher in the role of the creator and holder of impartial truth, and the participant in

the role of the subject who is without agency in the objective realm of knowledge

production. This is not to say that the division of such roles is absent from this research,

there is always a performative narrative inherent to the discourse on research which

informs the roles and behaviours in the researcher-subject power relationship.

Decisions such as topic and direction of conversation as well as analysis and

interpretation of the interviews are given to the researcher through their professional

position of privilege over information (Rose, 1997). The power relationship inherent in

the performativity of the interview situation is bound to influence the responses given by

the participants. For this reason it is important in analysis to take all interviews not as a

depiction of truth but as a contextual interpretation influenced by the participant’s role in

the interview (Valentine, 2001).

Research Area

The geographic scope of this research is limited to community gardens found

within the Ottawa City wards of Somerset (14) and Capital (17) (Appendix II - Fig. 1 &

2). These two wards for the purpose and definition of this study will be referred to as

Ottawa’s Core. These two sections were selected because they held the highest spatial

concentration of community gardens by ward (Appendix II, Fig. 3).

Somerset (14) includes the neighbourhoods of Downtown Ottawa, Centre Town,

Lebreton Flats and Centretown West. Capital (17) includes the neighbourhoods of Old

24

Ottawa East, Old Ottawa South, the Glebe, Heron Park, Carleton University and

Riverside.

A brief analysis of the 2006 Canadian census data by ward reveals a great deal

about the social geography of Ottawa’s population (City of Ottawa - a, 2009). For

instance 2008 permit data indicates that population density is highly concentrated in

Ottawa’s Core (Appendix II, Figure 4). As well 2006 census data on average income per

person suggests that wealth in Ottawa is concentrated in two areas (Appendix II, Figure

5). The first is banded in the outer perimeter of the urban limits of the Ottawa-Carleton

area, especially places such as Kanata and South Nepean. As well, wealth is

concentrated in the Capital ward, one of the places of interest to this study. Places

where wealth is least accumulated is in areas such as Rideau-Vanier as well as wards

across the southern portion of the urbanized Ottawa area. This provides a very

interesting situation to investigate, since the City’s Core, the area with the highest

concentration of community gardens experiences a dramatic spatial disparity of income.

This is likely to be seen along the boundaries of Centertown and The Glebe, or Sandy

Hill and Old Ottawa South.

The spatial distribution of recent immigrants having settled in Canada in the past

five years (Appendix II, Figure 6) indicate that on the whole, settlement seems to occur

in the centre of Ottawa’s urban area in the wards of Somerset, Capital, River and

especially Alta Vista. The distribution seems to fade outwards towards the peripheries of

the region with the exception of one outlier. That is, the Bay ward which holds one of

the highest proportions of recent immigrants despite its location straddling the

Greenbelt in West Ottawa. The spatiality of unemployment (Appendix II, Figure 7)

25

shows people are most likely to be unable to obtain employment who live in the urban

band around the city’s core. These are places such as Rideau-Vanier, Alta Vista, River,

and Bay. Important to note is that within the City’s core all wards report significant levels

of unemployment, but Rideau-Vanier reports the highest. As well neighbouring ward

Kitchissippi reports unemployment rates towards the lower end in the region.

What these figures seem to suggest is that there is a relationship between the

concentration and existence of community gardens, and higher population densities,

unemployment rate, lower incomes (not all cases) and greater presence of recent

immigrants. Of course there no way to extrapolate any sort of causal link between any

of the census data and the phenomenon of community garden. It is very likely that the

motivations for people to start and participate in community gardens is very diverse.

What seems evident out of all of the 2006 census data is that places where community

gardens exist are places that have greater population densities, therefore more

urbanized. This could offer a partial explanation implying that the urban nature of the

environment in which community gardening occurs, or perhaps that community gardens

would be redundant in other less dense parts of the city where growing crops on one’s

private property or on a farm as a means of livelihood is possible.

Research Method

In this research I conducted six semi-structured interviews with participants

holding various roles in the Ottawa community of community gardens. The participants

were selected through a variety of means. Initially it was intended that potential

participants would be approached via e-mail contacts provided corresponding to

26

different community gardens listed on the Community Garden Network website run by

Just Food Ottawa. Upon broadcasting the request for participation only one person

responded, as well as another who was sent the e-mail. After this unexpectedly low

return I then resorted to my secondary option, which was to use a “snowball” method

which entailed asking my participants to identify other potential participants. However

this did not result in any new participants, at which time I turned to various networks

involved in community gardening such as the Ontario Public Interest Research Group

(OPIRG), the Garden Spot food collective, as well as the Sonianda Sofia Workers Co-

operative. Through these networks I was able to contact four other participants.

Due to the in-depth nature of the interviews the ideal number of participants that

could return a sufficient amount of testimony for a meaningful analysis would have been

between five and ten (Kitchin & Tate, 200). The difficulties encountered during recruiting

allowed me to attain six interviews, which, though in the lower end of the range was still

acceptable to conduct an analysis. The number of participants may have been very

small in relation to the number of community gardener there likely are in the city of

Ottawa, which limits this study’s ability to describe the popular experience of the

phenomenon in the city. In this way, this research cannot speak for the experience of

community gardeners in Ottawa as a whole. However given the nature of the

candidates chosen, their experiences valuable through their deep and diverse

involvement with the movement qualifies the number of participants chosen for the in-

depth stories accounted of the community gardening phenomenon in Ottawa. In this

way, this research provides examples of what is possible through community gardening

in Ottawa.

27

The interviews for this research took place within the month of January, and

where conducted in a variety of locations. One interview took place at the office of the

Community Garden Network, one took place in a downtown café, another took place at

the Sonianda Sofia Workers Co-operative, two took place in quiet spaces found at

Carleton University and one took place at my house over supper. They were presented

with an informed consent form to sign describing the objectives of the research as well

as the benefits and risks they may encounter through participation. In the case of

benefits it was described that this research seeks to elevate the discourse of community

gardening and may benefit community gardeners through greater inclusion in academic

literature. For risks the participant was assured that they would face no risk of physical

harm outside of the normal course of their day. They were also assured that their

identity would be kept as confidential as I could provide to the best of my ability. This

means that none of their personal information would be shared and anything that could

directly reveal their personal identity would be destroyed upon the completion of the

research project. As well the form informed them that they were welcome to not answer

any of the questions as well as retract any statements made or even the interview in its

entirety if they wished. Despite all of these measures not one participant expressed any

wishes to remain anonymous or retract or refuse any questions or statements. However

no identities will be revealed in this research.

The six interviews represent the experience of participation with five different

community gardens in Ottawa. For most of the participants their experience was with

one garden, however for one, their experience was with three different gardens. Two of

the gardens discussed in the interviews represent the experiences of two participants.

28

Not all gardens discussed expressed direct community involvement, in the case of two

gardens discussed by one participant they had only participated for a brief period. All

gardens represented in this research fall within the research area parameters discussed

above. Three participants discussed their involvement with gardens outside of the

research area. For the sake of specific experiential details the accounts of these

gardens have been omitted, however where they provide general insight to community

gardening in the Ottawa context information will be used in the analysis.

Of those interviewed four were female and two were male. Though all accounts

discussed the involvement of both men and women in their community gardens,

information of the gender composition of the garden was not given and there is no

information as to the participation of transgendered or transexual peoples. It had initially

been planned to attain gender parity in the selection of participants, however since

sampling of participants was left mostly to chance this was not possible. However the

merit of privileging the female voice in this research will be discussed in the analysis

section.

The interviews themselves took a very organic style suited to the research

participant. If the participant expressed a greater interest in discussing the physical

details, the social aspects, or even spiritual meaning of their garden I would word

questions to address the topics relevant to this research in ways that allowed for

questions to access these realms of significance. For instance one participant was

interested in the details of layout and organization of the garden, in which case I asked

questions about its meaning in relationship to the landscape of Ottawa through

comparison of physical layout. I asked “what relationship does your community garden

29

space have with city space surrounding it?” to which he explained that for him it

diminished the environmentally destructive aspects of the area. However where

conversations strayed off topic, where the conversation fit with the nature of the

questions listed, or where the conversation failed to go any further questions were

asked directly from the interview guide sheet. When there were points or ideas that

needed clarification, or where there were new ideas not imagined during the

construction of the interview guide impromptu questions were asked. For the majority of

time spent interviewing the participants conversations were a very fluid dynamic and

covered all topics naturally.

Initially a list of two pages of questions were drafted for the interviews. In the

interview pilot run certain questions were identified as returning repetitive or redundant

answers and were removed. In the end the list consisted of one page of seventeen

potential questions. In the interviews certain questions were skipped if topics were

covered in conversation through previous questions or if it seemed that there would be

no relevance to what the participant had expressed as part of their community garden

experience. Interview duration expected to be between half-an-hour to fourty-five

minutes, however they ranged between twenty minutes and an hour the majority lasting

about half-an-hour.

For the sake of greater ease of conversation participants were asked if I could

record the conversation, which would be destroyed immediately upon transcription. The

interviews were recorded on a digital audio recorder, which were then downloaded onto

my computer and transcribed. The interviews were transcribed verbatim with certain

simplifications for the comments and questions of the researcher as well as omissions

30

for any parts that went into excessive detail of experiences outside the research area of

interest. Some of the interviews were interrupted unintentionally by people who did not

realize that the interview or recording was taking place. None of those interactions were

transcribed or will be noted in this research.

All participants were interested in the research and therefore very engaged in the

interview conversation. Upon offering their participation in this research all participants

were very enthusiastic about the research and the majority have requested a copy of

the final copy for themselves, which I have consented to. Some participants offered

additional resources in the form of literature, pictures, book suggestions and websites to

visit. The interviews where exceptionally informative and it seemed that both the

participants and myself benefited from new ideas and knowledge as a result. Before

and after the interviews technical aspects of gardening as well as events and plans for

the coming season were discussed. In the end these interviews allowed me to meet

other community gardeners which will benefit the network of community gardeners for

the opportunities to share information and resources that it has created. In the spirit of

solidarity with community gardening this project produces what it aims to discover.

Critical Discourse Analysis

In this research I have conducted a critical discourse analysis of the six

interviews. Critical discourse analysis based on Foucault’s genealogical method

(Naples, 2003) is the identification of discourses that produce, transmit and challenge

power through meaning and relationships. “Critical discourse analysis is ‘critical’ in the

sense that it aims to reveal the role of discursive practice in the maintenance of the

31

social world, including those social relationships that relations that involve unequal

relations of power” (Jørgensen & Phillips, 2002). In this research I have identified how

concepts of nature and social justice are framed and linked by the participants in their

experiences of community gardening. It is also very important that in discourse analysis

there be a clear understanding of who is describing their experiences (ibid.). In order to

provide this, participants were given the chance to express their background with

regard to community garden and what brought them to it.

It is important to note the role or the researcher in the analysis of the interviews.

Whereas the researcher ultimately acts as the gate keeper in the production of

knowledge in academic discourse, it would be naive to assume that the social position

of the researcher will not influence the dissemination of the interviews. Because this

research deals so specifically with the concepts of justice it is imperative to understand

how speaking (however indirectly) for people from a position of privilege may propagate

an oppressive power dynamic. For this reason it is important in an analysis that the

research intentionally take side with the movement to allow people to speak for

themselves and to engage any privilege towards the deconstruction of oppression in

solidarity with the struggles of peoples united in their marginalization. Proponents of

objectivity in analysis may suggest that one must report “both sides” of a situation in

order to gain a removed and complete understanding of a phenomenon (Kitchin & Tate,

2000). However adding the discourses of the privileged into this analysis would act to

further marginalize counter-hegemonic discourse and limit the radical objective of this

research.

32

The Gardens

Represented in these interviews are five different community gardens found

within the Ottawa downtown area (Appendix II, Figure 8). Though all gardens shared

similar physical and organizational traits, all gardens were very unique. These

differences in each garden were the result of the diversity of geography and peoples in

Ottawa’s downtown area.

The first garden accounted in the series of interviews was the Sweet Willow

Organic Community Garden. This garden is organized through the social housing

corporation Centretown Citizens Ottawa Corporation and it is located at 45 Rochester

Street. It has twelve plots located on the roof of an underground heating plant and

involves members of the adjacent social housing unit as well as the surrounding

community.

The next garden is the Garden Spot Food Collective garden. This garden was a

side project of the “G-spot’s” project of providing healthy vegan food at a pay-what-you-

can basis for students of Carleton University. The garden is located in the backyard of

the building where the collective rents a kitchen for the “G-Spot” project. The garden is

located on Bell Street South near Carling and was reclaimed by convertig the parking

lot into a yard. The garden project involves volunteers from the food collective who

organize the garden as one communal plot.

The third garden was the Umi Café Community Garden. This garden is

organized by the Sonianda Sofia Workers Cooperative that also runs the adjacent Café.

It has twenty plots and involves people who identify with the café community as well as

people in the surrounding communities. The garden exists on a previously grassy patch

33

of land between the commercial front of the China Town business district and a row of

low-income housing.

The fourth garden discussed was the Children’s Garden on the corner of Main

and Clegg Street. It is organized primarily by the Lady Evelyn alternative school as both

a play area and learning experience for their students. It is built on a city park that was

approved for the project. The garden is surrounded by upper-middle class housing, the

St. Paul University and various small businesses on Main Street. The garden involves

parents, children and teachers of the alternative school, as well as community workers

of the Sandy Hill Community Centre and a local aboriginal womens’ shelter.

The last garden is the Nanny Goat Hill Community Garden which is located on

the corner of Bronson and Laurier street. Established thirty years ago, it is one of the

oldest community gardens in Ottawa. The garden area is established on the site of a

demolished house. It involves some elderly growers who have been with the garden

since its beginning, as well as some young professionals and recent immigrants who

live in the surrounding neighbourhoods.

34

An Environmental Materialist History of Ottawa

From the beginning of European discovery, Ottawa has been subject to

inextricably connected systems of social marginalization and environmental destruction.

Beginning with the fur trade, followed by the lumber boom and the construction of the

Rideau Canal, and ending with intense urbanization and sprawl, the story of Ottawa fits

well within the environmental materialist narrative of Bookchin’s social ecology. The

creation of grassroots initiatives such as victory gardening during the First and Second

World Wars and community gardens since the early 1980s has demonstrated some

instances were libertarian municipalist and social ecological initiatives can help counter

these oppressive processes.

Early Resource Development

Since the beginning of European recorded history of the Ottawa Valley the region

has been subject to social marginalization and environmental destruction through

interconnected forms of economic and imperialist oppression. With the advent of the

French fur-trading industry based in Montreal, Algonquin peoples enjoyed control of the

Ottawa waterway positioning them as middlemen between the Europeans and the

trapping grounds to the north-west (NCC, 2007). In the early seventeenth century the

French penetrated the area gaining access to trade with Odawa and Huron peoples

taking control of trade from Algonquin peoples. The intensification of trade along with

the establishment of military alliances along the English-French divide intensified

territorial disputes among nations of the region happening since before the period of

contact (Great Canadian Rivers, 2007). The European systematic assertion of resource

35

extraction of the region began the process of dismantling the political and economic

determination of the region’s original nations. As a result many Algonquin people were

driven north off the Ottawa River away from their traditional hunting and fishing

grounds. The region was now open to the Europeans who exploited fur-bearing animals

to the point of commercial collapse in the region pushing European trappers further

north and west (NCC, 2007). The Algonquin already devastated by new diseases where

now vulnerable to Iroquois attacks (Great Canadian Rivers, 2007). It also seems likely

that the collapse of the regions fur economy would have resulted in the collapse of the

region’s subsistance economy.

In the early ninetieth century the first lumber mill opened in Wright’s Town

(present day Hull) caused by the sudden demand of timber in Britain due to Napoleon’s

blockade of supply ports in the Baltic (QAHN, 2004). Though the production of this mill

was low-scale relative to future developments, it demanded exploitative working and

living conditions of already impoverished French Canadian migrant workers (Lee,

2006). After the construction of the Rideau Canal in 1826 the lumber industry and

working settler population along the river exploded (St. Pierre, 2002). Lumber mills were

established by rich Canadian and American lumber barons from Brittania/Westborough

to Gatineau/Hull and Lowertown. This resulted in the exacerbation of working

conditions. French and Irish workers were crammed into a massive shanty town in

Lowertown where families were forbidden from owning property and had to rent poorly

constructed wooden houses from wealthy landowners for thirty-year periods. The

population was heavily concentrated and subject to devastating disease outbreaks with

the arrival of new waves of immigrants or excessive rainfall. Sewage and the bywash

36

from the canal flowed down the centre of King Edward avenue creating a diseased

cesspool surrounding the settlement (ibid.). Despite such terrible conditions the wealthy

political, merchant and military class settled in Uppertown across the canal refused to

construct sufficient hospital facilities, inhabitants were then forced to rely on the help of

nuns at the local convent to treat the ill and control epidemics. Of course many of the

nuns fell ill themselves.

The same process that led to the creation of such atrocious social conditions in

Ottawa was also the exact same process that resulted in the destruction of Ottawa’s

original ecological landscape. The companies that attracted and employed the

population of Lowertown were engaged in the systematic deforestation of the

surrounding Ottawa landscape areas further up-river (ibid.). This destroyed many

Algonquin hunting grounds and resulted in the formation of some of the reservations

found today (Hughson & Bond, 2009).

The imperialist British origin of Bytown (Ottawa) that was part of the military

conquest of the land and peoples of North America produced the destruction of many

wetlands and river-systems along the Rideau River. In 1826 Royal Engineers were sent

to construct a canal from the mouth of the Rideau River on the Ottawa River to

Kingston. It was created as an alternative route to ship weapons and supplies from

Montreal and Quebec to Kingston and the Great Lakes free from American attack

(Watson, 2008). The project employed thousands of French and Irish labourers needed

to drain wetlands, blast through rock formations and clear through kilometres of forest

and brush. As mentioned, work camps were established both along the construction

sites and back in Bytown, where workers and their families lived in rudimentary wooden

37

shacks in tight proximity. These camps were subject to severe cases of malaria where

up to 60% of workers contracted the disease. The malaria prominent in the region at the

time was not known to result in mortality however due to conditions of malnutrition,

injury and exhaustion up to five-hundred workers are estimated to have died from the

frequent outbreaks. Another five-hundred are expected to have died from different

causes relating to other diseases and accidents (ibid.).

The effect of this massive project on the natural landscape of the Rideau Valley

was severe and diverted most of the the flow of the central lake watershed system

draining at Kingston, down the Rideau River to Ottawa. As well the surrounding

landscape was largely deforested to offer land grants to many of the engineers of the

project. Colonel By also commanded land to be cleared with the expectation that it

would alleviate the strength of malaria outbreaks. The project also destroyed many of

the wild rice fields of the local indigenous nations, and the land grants and settlements

challenged the traditional hunting and fishing grounds of several Algonquin bands

(Lovlace, np.).

World War I and II

The lumber boom continued well into the twentieth century, and working and

living conditions became relatively better as families began to own their own land and to

organize as workers. However with the onset of World War I and II, urban areas

throughout Canada were faced with food shortages. With resources being directed to

soldiers fighting in overseas through the state of total war, available food was expensive

and low quality. While men were sent off to war women were employed to work in the

38

factories in their place producing war supplies. In order to supplement the diets of urban

Canadians as well as to provide food stocks to send overseas the government

encouraged the formation of “victory gardens” (Sciarra, 2007). Policy over private land

ownership was relaxed so that the civil societies could grow crops throughout Canadian

cities. Numerous restrictions limited what would be supplied by the government,

however the public embraced the idea of victory gardens and went well out of their way

to develop and maintain them (Buswell, 1980).

“Early in 1917, in view of the world-wide shortage of food stuffs, an active campaign was inaugurated by the City Council to stimulate production by means of cultivation of vacant lots and backyards. Briefly, the campaign was extremely successful; the response of the citizens generally was beyond expectation, and, in addition, many individuals freely gave their time and services in connection with the various committees. The campaign also had a stimulating effect upon production in the country districts adjacent to Victoria.”

“...Much greater necessity exists for increased food production during 1918. All authorities agree that the world supply of food is reduced to famine conditions in many countries, and to within a fraction of the famine line in the most favoured localities. "Every little bit counts," and it is earnestly to be hoped that in response, in Victoria, of the "Back-yard and Vacant Lot Brigade," during 1918, will greatly exceed the excellent record of 1917”. (Buswell, 1980)

This empowerment of civil society over land use and economic self-determination was

critical in avoiding famine during these periods of total war. This acts as an example of

a partial application of Bookchin’s libertarian municipalism producing better living

conditions. The success of these victory gardens would become an inspiration for the

growth of the community garden movements in Canada and the United States (Sciarra,

2007: 9).

39

Post-War Urban Growth and The Rise of Community Gardening

The post-war period is recognized historically as a period of increased population

growth around the world as well as the intensification and growth of urban areas.

From the end of the Second World War to the end of the twentieth century Ottawa

experienced a growth of 20.2% (Demographia, 2005), Canada saw 41% growth

(HRSDC, 2010), and the world’s growth is estimated at 41.6% (UN, 2004). During this

period urban sprawl was focusing growth in the suburbs of North American cities. As a

result there was less investment in core urban areas, which produced social unrest

among the lower-income inhabitants of inner-cities (Sciarra, 2007: 10). Though public

gardens existed throughout the United Sates in the late nineteenth century, community

gardening as a movement was established in the early 1970s (Wang, 2006: 5). In the

marginal urban conditions of this period of growth people began appropriating vacant

city lots to garden without any support or opposition of governments or landowners. The

movement resembled this guerrilla garden form up until the late 1970s when places like

New York and Montreal formalized the process by creating permits for public gardens

(Sciarra, 2007: 10).

In Ottawa community gardening was very slow in development. Gardens such as

Nanny Goat Hill, Gloucester Allotment Garden, and Kilbourne Allotment Garden were

started in the 1980s (Shantz, 2009; GAGA, np). However these gardens were

unaffiliated with one another or the city. They had to rely on community groups to

provide funding to run the gardens (Sciarra, 2007: 10). In 1999 university graduate

students attempted to organize a centralized network for community gardening through

community health centres. This project was combined with a pre-existing project begun

40

in 1997 at the Sandy Hill Community Centre with an operating budget of $5,000 (CGN,

2010). The project was successful and by that summer the network was holding regular

meetings and skill-sharing workshops. The network grew into what is known today as

the Community Gardening Network and quickly became a civil society organization to

lobby the municipal government for greater support of community gardening. In 2004

the CGN produced an action plan for the city to conduct an inventory of community

gardens and evaluate the city’s role and potential in developing the program as a part of

the Health, Recreation and Social Services Committee. The City Council approved the

reports call for a staff liaison to investigate access and resources for the development

and maintenance of community gardens in Ottawa. By 2006 there were twenty

community gardens in Ottawa (ibid.).

In 2008 the Ottawa City Council directed $75,000 to the CGN through Just

Foods from the Green Partnership Pilot Program for the purpose of creating new

community gardens (CGN, 2010). The Green Partnership Pilot Program was created in

2006 by the City of Ottawa in order to promote grassroots environmental initiatives.

With a budget of $1 million, 30 programs were selected for funding amounting to

$213,000 (City of Ottawa - c, 2009). The funding first took effect in 2009, but was

dedicated towards retroactive soil testing of already existing community gardens so the

effect of the funding on the start-up of new community gardens has yet to be

experienced (CGN, 2010).

“[W]e’ve had the money for a year but in the proposed 2009 budget, at the end of 2008 they deferred a lot of money from the green partnership program which was the beautification program and they had a lot of money and at the time that they deferred it I think it was a round four-hundred thousand dollars but they still had that in this fund and we said that we want some of that money and so we lobbied and we got rural people involved and urban people involved and

41

demonstrated in Ottawa on both ends, both rural and urban and we ended up winning an annual fund of seventy five-thousand dollars that goes to the community gardening network for starting your garden and expanding and enhancing the existing gardens, which is a really big deal because what happened before is that we only had five thousand and that was meant particularly to start new gardens so there was no benefit to the existing gardens, they had no place to go if they had really. And existing gardens should be self-sustaining but you know when you’ve got a broken water main or if you’ve got you know deer eating everything you know these expenses you don’t foresee because they aren’t foreseeable. And so where can they go and start for their one time infusion of large money to fix up the fence, you know, they didn’t have any access to that sort of thing, and five-thousand dollars does not start one garden. Sometimes it will only buy you water for one so you know you have to really think were we being supported enough by the city? And I think any support is good, but we thought more could be done so had this opportunity and we took it and now we are getting quite a lot of support from the city and I see us being capable of opening community gardens in every community, certainly we have quite a few councillors that are supportive of that and I see that with that continued support or confident support that yeah that’s absolutely doable.”(Interview 3)

Start-up funding is accessible to groups engaged in organizing a community

garden upon the submission of an application to the CGN. The criteria for eligibility is

the permission of the land-owner, agreement to garden organically, and an

organizational structure. Once approved, funding can go towards the cost of soil testing,

instillation of a water system, rain barrels or water cans, lumber for raised beds, rotor

tilling, first year seed purchasing, etc. Once started, gardens can also apply for

supplementary funding for repairs or critical needs from this funding (CGN, 2010).

This program demonstrates a clear example of how municipal governments can

produce environmental justice through social ecology policy. Through policies such as

the Green Partnership Pilot Program resources can be directed at solving social and

environmental problems through an ecosystems approach. Seeing society as a nested

tier of a greater urban and regional ecological system along with granting people

42

agency over land and ensuring economic self-determination is one step towards

producing a social ecology in the city.

43

Social Justice and Nature: Discourses of Social Ecology in Community Gardens

Three major themes were examined through the theory and interviews in this

thesis. The first were questions directed at the of social justice produced by community

gardens, the second was the role of nature and the environment in producing social

justice, and the third was the communication of social nature paradigms that might

dialectically link the two concepts together. The analysis of these interviews are divided

into these three categories respectively in order to disseminate narratives of social

ecology in community gardening found in the interviews. The interviews showed that

there is definitely a social ecology narrative to be found in the discourse of the

community gardens of their participants, however there are also cases where the theory

is problematized which is discussed throughout this section and in the conclusion.

Community Gardens and Social Justice

In the interviews conducted for this thesis certain experiences of social justice

were expressed in the experience of community gardening in Ottawa. Through six

interviews several reoccurring themes have become evident. Specific expressions of

social justice have been the importance of food security and economic self-

determination, inclusion of elderly and differently abled people, empowerment of

gendered and racialized peoples, and space for people coping with addictions.

The most frequently reoccurring theme in the interviews was the importance of

food security. All interviewees expressed that part of their motivation to engage in

community gardening was for ensuring the stability of their ability to obtain safe and

44

nutritious food. Certain factors that were discussed as barriers to this were the proximity

of places to obtain food:

Participant 1: “I live in an area that’s a food desert, so having access to fresh food right next door to where I live right there means that I don’t have to walk for twenty minutes to buy groceries... We have some nearby ethnic grocery stores where you might find certain things, but in terms of looking for your full range of groceries you have to leave the neighbourhood”.

As well, the nature of food costs in limiting peoples’ access to fresh, safe and

nutritious food:

P2: “[Y]ou know by having a community garden in every community more people have access to growing their own fresh food their definitely not spending as much money and if they have those concerns then this helps alleviate that somewhat”.

Another reason was the reliance on precarious food systems such as the

reliance on petroleum for the importation of food from around the world:

P5: “[I was] getting nervous about the idea that everything I eat is shipped in from Latin America or China or New Zealand and just that thought that if something ever were to go wrong we can feed ourselves in the city because the stocks in the grocery stores will only last us three days they say... I guess [food has] just become more politicized for me but also just as like the essentials of life and the idea that you know if anything were to go wrong with transportation or with a natural disaster or something that we wouldn’t starve, I mean there are farms all around us but yeah”.

Finally, there was also a concern over the disappearance of knowledge about

food and food systems among youth:

P5: “I remember going to one of these Ottawa barbecues at the public pools and I had a little booth set up with my volunteers and we were just in the community doing crafts and a little boy was asking me about all of these picture we had posted and I said something about well this is us building a raised garden bed and he actually said, he must have been eleven, “what’s a garden”? So it just floored me that, like you know, or we have green space but its not connected in that way, a place to run across or sit in the grass but we forget that soil, we don’t think about

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that food. Like they were weirded out by carrots with the tops on them, they were used to the little ones in the bags. And also getting familiar with wild foods that just like grow in our sidewalk cracks stuff and yeah that was amazing”.

The participants expressed that they identified community gardening as a part of

a solution to these blocks in strengthening food security. Though the participants

explained that the community gardens in their current size and function were not

adequate in solving this problem fully or providing a viable alternative food system, they

did identify it as an important part of generating awareness of food security issues and

food system alternatives.

P2: “But, I do see how it can for sure, like I think not having such a reliance on the big business for food is important, right? But at the same time too, a ten by ten plot or a ten by fifteen plot will feed one family or three people probably not all summer, so you can’t completely be removed from it”.

Similar to this issue was the importance of economic self-determination. Some

participants expressed that part of their motivation to participate in a community garden

was to challenge conventions of personal economic reliance on paid work to support

their livelihoods. For these participants the motivations for community gardening were

primarily political. They expressed the feelings that they would prefer to be self-reliant

individually or collectively and rather not have to rely on needing a job to earn a living.

Rather they would prefer to have control over the means of production of their food:

P3: “You’re then turning labour into something that is useful as opposed to something that has a monetary value to it... Well first of all you claim that things are property, you socially construct this aspect of land as property and then from there you can privatize it which means that you are excluding some people from it. And what community gardens do is the opposite of that, it does not generate capital from it, it does not add exchange value to its labour, and it is not excluding one from that property... A lot of people are working for organizations that generate a lot of surplus value that the workers don’t see that but their value provides a

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lot of; their work provides a lot of value to it and they can’t see any. When you arrange labour in a community garden sense these people were traditionally, like everybody who was traditionally excluded from, yeah the fruits of their labour”.

Another participant emphasized the importance public land reclamation in

addition to community control over the means of producing food. From this experience it

is possible to see a parallel to Blomley’s (2004) Vancouver example of public gardening

it its ability to alter and problematize the definition of private property. For the participant

it was important that society take land back from developers and the government for the

use of his community:

P4: “It means appropriating what was already ours. You know? Taking back my right to grow food, you know, to feed myself and the teach. You know its taking back something that was taken away from us. Whether it was taken away from the city planners, how they plan a city, the city itself or something like that I feel like it was something that was taken away from me, you know? And I feel that doing this is, I’m taking something back that’s rightfully ours, that’s justifiably ours. I don’t really need to argue it, you know because I already eat vegetables and I need vegetables to eat, so I shouldn’t have to you know depend on somebody else, and I shouldn’t- what goes into my food, and how my food is grown shouldn’t be in the hands of someone else. It should be my choice, and yeah, it should be taking back what is directly ours”.

Another aspect of producing social justice in a more tangible sense was how it

has provided equity for conventionally marginalized groups of people. The most

effective indication of this was the role of community gardens in giving peoples with

different mobility needs access to food production. Most of the community gardens that

were discussed in the six interviews were, to some degree accessible to people with

different needs. In the case of the elderly certain community gardens took certain

considerations of limited abilities to walk up stairs or crouch down low by providing

removable wheelchair ramps and raised-bed gardens. As well, community support

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allowed elderly people to garden despite the inability to perform certain tasks such as

turning soil and compost:

P1: “There is that sort of co-operative sort of spirit in our garden and I know one of the members of our garden is one of the raging grannies. So for her, you know its like its really that. She wants it to be egalitarian and community involved and supportive. You know as a raging granny, she pretty super old and as the years go by she is less and less able to do her own gardening. So for her its an opportunity for her to do what she wants supported by other people. Help her compost, or turn her soil, that type of thing. A lot of the people that are involved in the garden live on lower income and while a lot of community gardens aren’t very accessible to lower income people because they just don’t have access to the tools or money to buy seeds or plants, because we work very co-operatively we can support each other and make it more accessible to different groups of people”.

However in this case the extent of this provision was limited. The plots that had been put aside for people with different accessibility needs were placed in locations that were not favourable for growing certain plants:

P6: “[T]here was talk about connecting with this group home [across the street] and having you know people from the group home come and have a little garden plot that was wheelchair accessible and unfortunately the wheelchair accessible plots were in the back in the shade, like “here you can have these, I don’t know what you can grow but...”, making some greens grow there but not tomatoes. So you know, like the idea was there and it was a little flawed and it wasn’t completely played through but I think that there is a lot of potential for links like that to be made”.

Beyond providing accessibility to the elderly and the differently abled, a

participant had expressed community gardens as important places to reconnect the

elderly with the greater community of the neighbourhood. Whereas elderly people seem

to be excluded from society in the community garden they hold a valuable role:

P5: “[There is a man that] has been with the garden since the beginning and he says he came back from, he’s been like a war vet and worked for the government and the retired and decided to start this garden, he must have been in his eighties when I met him. And he’s been sort of like a grandfather of the garden so he’ll tell anybody the history who wants to listen and helps the other people set up their plots and you know like doing a little bit of sort of community education and he’s actually got this nice

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corner plot and he’s got a big trellis set up has cherries under there so in the summer he said he’ll come in and weed in the morning and sit down and anyone who comes through you know he’ll just get into discussions with them. And just self taught and really intelligent, he knows a lot about gardening and does a lot of preserving and things”.

In the case of how racialized and gendered peoples have found justice in

community gardening involves empowerment through participation in constructing an

alternative food system. One garden acted as a place for an indigenous women’s aid

group to practice and teach certain agricultural practices from their cultural background:

P5: “[The Childrens’ Learning Garden] they were working with a womens’ shelter down the street with primarily Anishinabek women and so they did a workshop on the three sisters and they planned a little pond where they were going to try and grow wild rice... They worked with the kids, so they came in and did a workshop with the kids about the three sisters and sort of like different cultural ideas of plants and I know some of the kids were talking about the idea of an animated spirit within a plant or you know plants as living beings. It was lovely to you know talking to the plants and telling them that its good to talk to the plants they have spirit too and things... I thought that was nice too because bring a different I guess cultural foods, because with Anishnabek being the harvesters of wild rice and then being more like the Iroquois and Huron three sisters sort of food culture I guess... I think most people here know quite a bit about like the three sisters being so widely spread throughout North America and South America but a lot of people don’t realize that wild rice exists or that people have been harvesting it for centuries around this area and yeah that it is like increasingly, these areas are being destroyed for recreational homes and things like that”.

However this kind of involvement was also limited in its empowerment of the

womens’ group:

P5: “I guess one criticism would be, just because visually even to separate the plot where we learn about indigenous foods growing away from the other plots. So I can see the reason behind it is it is sort of like the three sisters plot so you can go there and learn about it. Just seeing it makes me critical of it, just the fact that they are separated but I still think you know the example being there, it being called the three sisters area of the, that they can, it really is a nice little walk through where kids and families can sort of just tour through the garden and see these different plots”.

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In one case a community garden acted as a place for one man coping with

addiction to be engaged with the community and use gardening as a therapeutic activity

empowering them to seek other meaningful social participation:

P5: “[W]e had one man living in the boarding house, I’m sure you’ve seen him he’s got some addictions that, he’s done a lot of gardening before, he grew up on a farm and he built the compost for us and he would come out and weed for us if he was bored. So it became a really nice sort of place to bring our community together for people who normally feel alienated to be with young people, you know just because they have this knowledge to share with us and feeling comfortable to come in and make that connection because you feel great”.

Community Gardens and Nature/Environment

In the interviews conducted for this thesis certain expressions of social nature

were accounted in the reporting of experiences of community gardening in Ottawa.

Important themes surrounding nature and the environment are local food and organic

agriculture, being connected to nature, natural aesthetics, land use and urban sprawl,

environmental health, and biodiversity.

The most frequent theme expressed the importance of locally and organically

produced food. Certain participants identified that these factors were important in their

motivation and value of community gardening because they saw it as having a direct

impact on the environment. These participants explained that having a food system

where the distance between grower and consumer is minimized reduces the

environmental footprint of transportation and storage.

P1: “Well they definitely make the route smaller. You know somebody was telling me that you know how some the big chain grocery stores have started advertising that they sell local produce, but because of the way those stores work they’ll buy the tomatoes locally but then they ship them to the warehouse for storage and then they ship them back. So even if its grown really close its already travelled quite a trip. So eliminating that. The

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difference between anything coming out of a truck and me stepping out the back door, picking some tomatoes is shortens the loop. Then if I take the waste and put it in my compost bin I put it back into the soil its definitely more self-sufficient”.

Participants that identified organic agriculture as an important aspect of their

community garden experience expressed concern over the lack of knowledge of the

effects of genetic modification of plants and animals for consumption. The importance of

organic food is then associated with what one participant has called being a “conscious

consumer”, meaning that they choose the sorts of things they consume based on

environmental and social values, such as in the form of vegetarianism/veganism:

P5: “... [B]eing more aware of the impacts of pesticides and that insidious sort of movement of genetically modified foods into grocery stores without any ability to tell one from another, there is no labelling system, and I’ve always sort of been what I call a conscientious consumer because I have always tried to think of my food and the impact it makes so I’ve been a vegetarian for fourteen years and a vegan for two or three now”.

As part of the local-organic theme the appeal of do-it-yourself production was

also an important factor. Participants expressed this as a critical aspect of the local-

organic food system. It is not enough in this respect that food is produced locally and

within legal organic certification, the informality and transparency of do-it-yourself and

community food practices were more critical. This public inclusion in the food production

process is then also important for connecting with growers and understanding the

environmental footprint of the city.

P1: “[E]nvironmentally it certainly helps out where we are able to grow out own food. I would also say it also gives us a better understanding or sympathy towards farmers and the rural folks, and that’s a huge problem in Ottawa. At least its a step. Other than that you know I think there is this whole wastefulness of society. Instead of going out doing whatever whenever wherever kind of thing, I think having community gardens, and having that kind of access to fresh food it makes you look at things differently. Since I’ve started community gardening, I’ve also started

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canning and preserving a lot of stuff. And I do a lot of scavenging for crab-apples and rose-hips and stuff and I kind of find it, like it makes you look at things differently walking around the urban core like I could tell you where the pear trees and the plum trees are in peoples’ front yard or back yard that aren’t being picked... You know certainly Ottawa has a big agricultural footprint, so in Ottawa’s economy I’m sure that does have a significance but just the little bit of community gardening that happens is not going to make a dent in that”.

The next most prevalent theme in the nature/environmental motivations for

community gardening was the creation and maintenance of one’s connections to

nature. Participants expressed a striving towards a natural authenticity through a direct

connection to weather patterns, soil, processes of decomposition and plant growth.

P1: “Just wanting to have that connection to the land and to have access to fresh food. It would be the community part of the community garden, but I think a lot of the stuff that we do in this city is so robot that this is just a chance to connect more with nature without having to leave the city. [Referring to rebuilding the BUGS garden] At one point when were talking about basically having what would have been a parking garage under it. And so the garden could still be at ground level but we were mentioning to them the benefits of that being located on top of a parking garage means that you would again have a few extra days of growing. And they were actually not having that. They were like ‘No, we want to be in the ground’”.

An aspect of this theme is also the importance of becoming connected to the

natural surroundings that have always existed in one’s area. In an urban neighbourhood

there may have been a bush or tree that one often encounters in their daily life but

never appreciates. Community gardening in the case of one participant, has opened

them up to noticing and valuing the natural elements of place and centring it as an

important part of participation in the urban landscape.

P2: “I notice trees a lot more cause you know, when you’re talking about gardening you know you’ve got the drip line and okay is there enough space to put one in maybe? Ten plots there, outside of those trees? You know I have been around communities, we have approached developers in the past and other communities to see their parts to see if there is any space for any community gardens and stuff like that. So I do, I do notice

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the natural landscape a lot more. I also notice what’s going on in parks a lot, which is something that I - I don’t have children so I - I do go to parks, I know where the dog parks are and that sort of thing but I never really paid attention to parks, but now I know pretty much all the activities that go on in parks all over the city”.

Finally, the importance of connectedness to nature can hold an interpersonal role

in one’s motivation to engage in community gardening. For one participant they were

interested in community gardening for the purpose of educating others about how

humans are connected to nature.

P5: “I want to see people learn about that and connect with that and understand that hard work can create that effect for people who feed us because its backbreaking work and its so challenging in that it is so uncertain and I think we get a lot of respect for the people who grow our food and for the effort that it takes and the connection that you have to, the plants around you, the animals around you, the seasons, the daylight, it just really connects you to the bigger world around us that we forget when we are looking at the skyscrapers and we think that the only world that we will exist in is that human world”.

The third most prevalent theme in natural/environmental motivations for

community gardening was natural aesthetics. Several participants expressed the

importance of the value of a landscape that looked natural and how personally and

socially therapeutic it can be. To one participant the aesthetic of nature in the urban

landscape actually altered his experience of social justice through community gardening

in his neighbourhood.

P4: “I think when people see a garden and they see people you know, walking out with food, and they see children playing out in the garden and they see people working, I think it provides like a simple outlook on life, one of like very much of joy and connectedness, you know? Whereas if I were to look at an alleyway with garbage cans and you know the garbage spilling out of it, and you know graffiti over graffiti, over graffiti, over graffiti and a foul stench from the you know the surroundings I don’t think you feel very connected to that and that’s a very desolate picture and it paints a very desolate picture inside of people and people are directly related to that. So when people see a garden, although it won’t- unless they are

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gardening themselves and they are experiencing it, which can be a very therapeutic process, even just seeing it happen can provide some relief I guess to the congestion that otherwise exists in the city that’s sort of sucks the social welfare of people”.

Another participant placed the aesthetic of the community garden within a

narrative of environmental justice in the urban landscape. This participant identified that

they enjoyed the sense of subversive activity in creating an aesthetic imbalance in the

gray landscape that surrounded the plot. In this the participant locates the garden as a

starting point of resisting environmental encroachment.

P3: “ The garden spot one was a contrast against everything that was a round to the parking lot that was next to it, or behind it actually. There is an apartment parking lot there right behind it, across the fence line. Like there are trees here and there but they are planted in between the concession plots of that area and we were surrounded by buildings and stuff like that. So it was like it created like a visual imbalance, when you have like more concrete in this gray cityscape, we punctured a visible hole in it”.

For a different participant an important advantage to community gardening is

simply the sheer joy and sense of happiness that the image of a community garden in

the landscape brings.

P2: “[T]hey’re beautiful, you know I find them really attractive and lots of people find them aesthetically pleasing for local food growing especially when the tomatoes start to hang and the plants start to fall over and I love that. I love the colours”.

The fourth most prevalent theme for the natural/environmental motivations for

community gardening was land use and urban sprawl. While cities encroach upon the

surrounding landscape with suburban housing reducing the amount of suitable soil for

growing food, there is still land that is not being used in the downtown core of cities. For

one participant community gardening is one means of reversing that process.

P5: “[S]o I feel like a community garden in an urban centre is almost an attempt to reverse suburban sprawl, to sort of turn around what we never

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though of as cultivating that which is cultivable, creating some place that can produce food”.

As a result of this motivation to create community gardens the perception of

urban landscapes have dramatically changed.

P2: “Well my life now exists of looking for vacant spaces to put community gardens in. I see the city in a completely different way than I used to, and I see beauty in community gardens so I always visualize how an empty-vacant-abandoned lot would look like with, you know, hockey sticks with tomatoes growing up them or whatever but certainly that is how my outlook of the city has changed I’ve just mean when I’m walking down the street on my way to work or if I’m grabbing a coffee I’m constantly looking for those abandoned pockets a community garden might fit in”.

P4: “Well every time I see an empty lot I picture a garden, that’s for sure. If you want to picture the possibilities, this garden was really built out of nothing. Built out of an idea and like a willingness to not let go of the idea”.

Though not receiving as much attention the principal of environmental health

was a motivator for one person to participate in a community garden. For this

participant the use of space for a community garden meant that it would not be used as

a parking lot or other kind of site that would be contributing to the release of

environmental toxins as well as local and global climate changing emissions such as

heat and carbon dioxide.

P3: “The garden spot’s was actually the only only green space. It was formerly a parking lot and the parking lot was contributing negatively to the ecological value to its surroundings, so you have the leakaging of gas and oil which actually, we tested the pH and it was safe to grow stuff in there, which was really good. It cuts down on that possibility of carbon dioxide emitted from vehicles and having a black surface of that concrete top contributed to its negative environmental aspects of the city. And it provides a green space, increasing all of the good things environmentally, chemically and so on”.

Finally, the last theme discussed as part of nature/environmental motivations to

participate in community gardening was the promotion of biodiversity and the re-

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introduction of pollinators into urban ecosystems. For one participant the importance of

diversifying the number of species in the urban landscape and the security of pollinators

crucial for the production of food and the survival of plant life was very important in their

participation in community gardens.

P1: “I am more aware of the bees. I’m more worried about the bees now. One thing we; well I have my own dreams but its not going to happen, is keeping bees of a rooftop. But you can’t, we might have tenants who are allergic. So that would be super cool if we could have colonies of bees. People in buildings and bees on roofs and a goat or two up there. More about the interrelationships between things”.

In this section of the analysis the participant indicated that the most important

aspects relating to nature were the acquisition of local food, organic agriculture, being

connected to nature, natural aesthetics, land use and urban sprawl, environmental

health, and biodiversity. These themes were found often juxtaposed or combined with

the discussion of social justice. The connection of these two themes in the interviews

demonstrates the interconnectivity of social issues and nature in the production of

justice through community gardening. These linkages will become more evident in the

following section.

Social Nature and Community Gardens as Heterotopias

In the interviews conducted for this thesis certain accounts were given indicating

what sorts of socially constructed perceptions of nature are engaged in community

gardening. These narratives provide an insight into the discursive processes that drive

the creation of community gardens, perceptions that change as a result of community

gardens and the sorts of relationships they have with the landscapes they are situated

in. In almost all interviews statements were given identifying and problematizing

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conventional dichotomies between society and nature. The interviews also provide an

illustration of where the participants view power relationships in construction of certain

social natures. In light of this, participants have expressed deliberate use of community

garden space to contest the implicit hegemonies of these narratives on nature.

In deconstructing the power relationships of urban space one participant was

able identify through community gardening who they saw had power over the social

definition of nature.

P5: “I think it has changed my impression, I’ve always thought of Ottawa as a green city and I really its green space, but more and more now I see our green space as manicured and artificial and I mean I know that urban landscape is somewhat artificial but I see that there is so much room in this city where we could be growing things like food”.

This person posits the power to control nature in city space to the governing

municipal and cultural institutions. The characteristics identified by the participant

seems to affirm that the society-nature dichotomy narrative is represented in the urban

landscape. Nature is not literally cast away from from the city all together as would

support the literal narrative, however nature is given a specific place in the Ottawa

landscape. In the National Capital Commission website parks and green spaces are

discussed as a part of the “Capital” image. The NCC’s vision for green space and parks

includes:

“A ‘conservation’ function, involving the maintenance and restoration of natural ecosystems in order to preserve the natural environments within Canada’s Capital that are representative of the country as a whole”. (NCC, 2010)

Such discourse puts nature in a place of representation in the Nation’s Capital

landscape as a symbol of Canadian Identity. This demonstrates how nature is

discursively produced in the city’s landscape in part as the process of nation-state

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building. This imperialist project is very evident in the participant’s description. The

“manicured and artificial” nature that is interpreted in these parks by the participant

almost reflects the ways in which the Government of Canada grapples with the task of

catering to a Canadian Nation that is in fact a population composed of diverse in

discontinuous identities. In both cases what results is the meticulous grooming and

inauthentic image of what it seeks to represent.

Some participants attempt to deliberately problematize these notions of the

social-natural dichotomy and the communication of normative discourse found in the

natural landscape. One participant explains their experience with the deconstruction of

these paradigms.

P6: “I think of nature now in terms of sort of a continuum of wildness so you know there is nature that is more wild and nature that is less wild and more controlled by humans. I guess when I say wild I mean nature that is less controlled by humans, and/or has more intact ecosystems so like more natural flows and I don’t know how clear that is. And yeah so for me I think like I do wild-crafting for example so, and for me community gardening or urban gardening is just part of that continuum of connecting with my, just recognizing that I am part of the environment, the environment is part of me like its not just separate things. And so to be able to garden in the city or even help green spaces in the city become a little more wild, I think that’s really valuable and important because that way we are not separating ourselves so much from nature and from wild nature and having this sort of idea that wilderness that is sort of unrealistic and pretty socially unjust because of all of the aboriginal people that have been displaced from this homeland because of our idea of wilderness.

Moving beyond this deconstruction of normative discourse on nature, one

participant began to offer a counter-hegemonic depiction of nature in their lived space.

Similar to bell hooks (2009), this participant illustrated a re-centring of nature from its

position of marginalization to a discursive home-place of celebration. At the same time

the participant was also able to internalize this discourse on nature.

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P4: “I mean one can really like admire the aesthetic of nature and the essence of nature, the whims of perfect sort of harmony of nature and the madness of nature at the same time. You know when you go into thinking about the nutrients in the soil, and what different plants need and want and like and prefer, and how different insect life and little critters can help and how the other animals interact with it. It just paints such a vivid picture of what nature is and how it is here to give us life, you know? Like its unbelievable seeing those things grow day to day and from one day to the next, you know, its like a branch grew another arm and another arm, and another arm and you know a change that you might see in a human being take six months to a year, in the garden it will take place in a matter of days. Definitely, just as more we definitely take more than we give to the earth and that speaks a lot to sort of our place as humanity now days in the world we are just taking, taking and not giving enough. And the thing you is it puts me in the zone of exchange with the earth and respect and just a lot more connected to the life giving forces, and its amazing”.

This discourse on nature presents a direct comparisons between the biology of

the garden plants and humans. This direct correlation indicates resistance to a

hierarchy of humans over non-humans, in effect, it humanizes the plants. Finally in this

excerpt the values found in its discourse are transformed into a normative direction for

humanity based on the experience of the community garden. The participant is able to

translate the idea of participating in nature in a community garden with the way

humanity ought to participate in nature globally. This appears to construct a ecologically

democratized narrative of nature seeing humans as a participant in an ecosystem.

Participants were also able to ground such counter-hegemonic discourses in

space in the construction of community gardens as heterotopias. In most interviews

participants were able to identify their community gardens as discontinuous with the

surrounding landscapes. This was portrayed by one participant in a very dramatic way:

P4: “People who didn’t have any plots would come around and talk to the gardeners, share their experiences and were just sort of in awe. Sort of like, you know you would have thought that we were holding an elephant on that lot and people were just walking by looking at this elephant in the middle of the city. You know it did provide a central point of like, sort of

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inspiration maybe or a centring of the attention of the community so that they had something to talk about, had something to come see, something to come be a part of”.

To this person the community garden experience produced a very radical

difference from the surrounding landscape. The participant also expressed how this

garden has changed the space surrounding it. What was observable by the participant

was that the values inherent to the social nature of community gardens were able to

permeate the surrounding space. The value of community inherent to the community

garden was communicated and internalized by members of the surrounding community

who then used the site itself as a place for such community to take place.

In a different case a community garden contributed to the transformation of one

participants understanding of social nature which influenced their outlook on the entire

city. The participant who initially saw nature through the social-natural dichotomy was

convinced of the lack of a meaningful connection to nature in the city and constantly

sought to escape it. The community garden not only provided a place where the

participant could achieve this but also changed the way they saw nature surrounding it.

P5: “Well I think I see nature more than I did before because I definitely fell into that mindset of nature sort of devoid of humans. So the natural world being whatever existed without human interference, but now I see it much more like this symbiotic relationship, so nature now is like the grass in the sidewalks, the weeds that we, you know what we call weeds in old dusty planters you know. So I think I see now like we are definitely more a part of nature in my mind now. And I think a lot of that must come from like actually digging in the earth and like you know seeing the whether it is behind a cafe or surrounded by apartment buildings, that earth is still the same as it is out you know acres and acres away from human habitation you know. So I think its just, yeah its broadened my idea of what nature is and I no longer feel like I have to necessarily escape because there is always, I have this idea that to be at nature, to be at peace, to be calm is to be connected, but there was always that you have to get away to find that. So now its much more like I feel like I could just stand on my sidewalk and just look up at a tree and I’m connected with nature”.

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It seems evident that nature under this narrative is inclusive of human activity. It

is a nature that is not only co-operative and democratic, but also a place of healing and

resistance.

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Conclusion

In this thesis certain community gardens in Ottawa were examined in order to

understand the intersectionality of social justice and ecology. This social-natural

dialectic explains, to an extent, the marginalization of people through environmental

destruction and development, and it can also stand as an avenue for environmental

justice through the construction of systems of social ecology. This thesis was able to

demonstrate a case of social ecology in action, and how it constructed if not the

accomplishment of environmental justice, then the paradigmatic basis for it.

At the beginning of the thesis the combination of two historically disconnected

spheres of theory was shown to be possible. Traditionally based in environmental

materialism Murray Bookchin’s social ecology has, throughout its history excluded the

inclusion of ontological-based poststructuralist theories and methodologies. In this

thesis it was demonstrated that, as seen in the fields of political economy and political

ecology, an ontological deconstruction of materialist power relations can equally

contribute to the libertarian and socialist projects of materialist Marxism and anarchism.

It can do this because of the success of such poststructuralist theorists as Michel

Foucault who were able to demonstrate the ontological bases for the social construction

of power relationships in capitalist and statist power structures. This paper filled the gap

between the two theoretical spheres. It shows that in practice certain projects such as

community gardens can connect discourses of resistance to the construction of a

libertarian and worker-led political economy.

Also in this thesis a brief history of how natural resource development and

European imperialism have produced marginal working and living conditions amounting

62

to famine and epidemic disease outbreaks in the Ottawa Valley. Though the connection

between the fur-trade and the displacement of Algonquin peoples, deforestation and

oppressive living and working conditions, and finally the construction of the Rideau

Canal and the exacerbation of famine and disease, the history of Ottawa clearly

demonstrates the intersectionality of ecological destruction and the marginalization of

peoples. However victory gardens during war times, and community gardens more

recently in periods of intense urbanization, operates as ecologically driven means

through which people can resist such destructive systems of oppression to empower

themselves and improve their living conditions.

The findings of this thesis conducted through a series of six in-depth semi-

structured interviews shows that social ecology in action is working to a significant

degree. It was discovered that community gardening, though limited in its effects does

act to improve social conditions, empower communities and provide people with some

degree of economic self-determination. Though the experiences accounted for in this

thesis are hardly revolutionary, they do show some very promising results. The

participants have expressed that though community gardening projects they

experienced some tangible ways they were able to better their social welfare and

produce economic self-determination. However, most significantly, these gardens act as

discursive places to challenge and resist oppressive paradigms. They are places where

as in Blomley (2004), the community was able to problematize the concept of private

property ownership effectively producing a commons area.

More traditional theorists in the field of social ecology would discount this as

providing no significant contribution to the construction of the ideal political economy.

63

Yet, I would argue that the accounts given by people using the garden sites to dream of

their ideal political economy is fundamentally important to this project. There is no doubt

that as community gardens continue to grow in size, number and popularity, society will

increasingly challenge the conventional statist-capitalist paradigms of current urban

food systems. Society will insist upon having more self-determination over space and

resources in their cities, either through civil society organization or more revolutionary

means. The ideas of participation in ecology and the freedom to create community and

to determine the collective organization of resources are certainly the first step in

producing an ecological and social system of urban land reform.

Furthermore the space that community gardens provide has been shown to

facilitate the construction of communities. In urban areas where the idea of community

is often absent because of social conventions that privilege individualist participation in

the economic system and individualistic arrangements of life, community gardens, by

many accounts, have permitted many typically disconnected people to participate

together in the garden. They also act as spaces where oppressive racial, gender, ageist

and ableist paradigms are challenged. The uniting of oppressed peoples through such

spaces physically and discursively reveals the importance of nature as a space of

resistance. Community gardens, in this thesis, have shown how nature, however

tampered by humanity in urban space, can create space very similar to the narrative of

wilderness as the space where bell hooks resisted racial prejudice and poverty.

The impact that this research has on the academic study of community gardens

is how it shows such spaces constructed through power and resistance rely upon the

conflict of prevailing discourses in society. The community garden if not just a tangible

64

place that holds plants, it is where people are puncturing holes in the normative

discourses of the liberal urban landscape for a new political economy to emerge.

This research does not necessarily act as a prescription for community gardens

to cure the injustices that are incurred by people and nature in cities by institutionalized

systems of hierarchy through a clear social ecology. Rather, the findings demonstrate

community gardening as a place for the discourses and traditions of a social ecology to

form, necessary in the production of an urban-agrarian land reform that would produce

a libertarian municipalism as envisioned by Murray Bookchin. Community gardens and

community gardening organizations may in the future see success in promoting their

project as encouraging forms of participatory democracy and economy in order to attain

funding or to further build their movement.

The case in which the City of Ottawa provided seventy-five thousand dollars to a

civil society group to organize community gardening through a million dollar community

environmental and beautification pilot fund demonstrates specifically how municipalities

can contribute to the production of a social ecology in their cities. If more resources

were to be directed towards empowering communities to determine their own economic

means of food production it is likely that community activities would continue along the

lines of community gardening. For this reason, it seems the only way to make a city

truly green is to give power to the people to do it for themselves.

65

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72

Appendix I: Interview Questions

73

Chris BissonCommunity Gardens and Urban Geographies of Environmental Justice

Interview Question Guide

Can you tell me how long have you participated in this community garden and others?

Can you describe your community garden?

Can you describe the area surrounding the community garden?

Can you tell me why you think the community garden is located where it is?

Can you tell me about how you got involved with community gardening?

Can you tell me what community gardening mean to you?

Can you tell me what relationship you feel the community gardens has with its natural surroundings?

Can you tell me what relationship you feel the community garden has with its surrounding communities?

Can you tell me what relationship the community garden has with the social welfare of the surrounding population?

Can you tell me what relationship the community garden has with the greater society of Ottawa?

Can you tell me what relationship the community garden has with food systems in Ottawa?

How would you say your outlook on the city has changed since you started community gardening?

How would you say your perspective on your natural surroundings has changed since you started community gardening?

How would you say that your community garden has changed the local landscape?

Where do you see community gardening going in the future?

What do you think your city’s planners and politicians think about community gardening?

Why do you think people participate in community gardens?

74

Appendix II: Maps

Figure 1 - Ward 14: Somerset

Figure 2 - Ward 17: Capitol

Figure 3 - Registered Community Gardens by Ward

Figure 4 - Population Density by Ward

Figure 5 - Average Income by Ward

Figure 6 - Proportion of Recent Immigration Population By Ward

Figure 7 - Unemployment Rate By Ward

Figure 8 - Community Gardens Discussed in This Thesis

75

SID

NE

Y C

OO

K

Figure 1 - Ward 14: Som

erset. City of Ottawa. Retrieved O

ctober 21, 2009, from

http://ww

w.city.ottaw

a.on.ca/residents/statistics/census/w

ards/index_en.html

76

SIDNEY COOK

Figure 2 - Ward 17: Capitol. City of Ottawa. Retrieved October 21, 2009, from http://www.city.ottawa.on.ca/residents/statistics/census/wards/index_en.html

77

Figure 3 - Comm

unity Garden Sites Registered W

ith the City of Ottawa and City W

ard Boundaries. City of O

ttawa, 2009. Retrieved October 21, 2009 from

http://apps104.ottawa.ca/emap/.

78

Figure 4 - Population Density Excluding Greenbelt Area By W

ard, from 2008 City of O

ttawa building permit data,

retrieved October 25, 2009 from

http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/statistics/data_handbook/other/table_51_en.html

79

Figure 5 - Average Individual Income By W

ard, from 2006 Canadian Census, retrieved

October 25, 2009 from

http://city.ottawa.on.ca/residents/statistics/census/wards/index_en.html

80

Figure 6 - Proportion of Recent Imm

igration Population By Ward, from

2006 Canadian Census, retrieved O

ctober 25, 2009 from http://city.ottawa.on.ca/residents/statistics/census/wards/index_en.htm

l

81

Figure 7 - Unemploym

ent Rate By Ward, from

2006 Canadian Census, retrieved October 25,

2009 from http://city.ottawa.on.ca/residents/statistics/census/wards/index_en.htm

l

82

Figure 8 - Comm

unity Gardens Discussed in This

Thesis.

83