Eighteen years after its inception, the Grafton Community Garden got a facelift in 2025! A shot of exuberant goodwill from a committed group of local residents painstakingly weeded, re-imagined, and replanted a newly beautiful and vibrant community garden at Roncesvalles and Grafton Avenues. The space came back to life in delicious technicolour! The revitalized garden and garden activities drew in more residents and even passersby who commented on how great it looked.
The garden is maintained by a core group of volunteers. Chad Townsend expertly led testy discussions with the Parks department which included presenting a design developed and produced by Amy Turner, a licensed Landscape Architect, who incorporated input from the group into a new design. Once we had the go-ahead, the rest of the team jumped in: Jarek Piorkowski (and his son Coby), Maria Nunes, Christine Harron, Paddy Harrington, Céline Cressman, and Torgunn Townsend. We decided that the raspberries had become too out of control, so most were pulled and potted up and left for passersby to take home. All disappeared within a couple of days. While clearing the existing old, tired garden beds of years’ worth of weeds, lots of goldenrod and garlic chives we saved and replanted the many strawberries we discovered.
The new design included nine individual raised beds which were maintained by local residents. Chad brought the lumber down from up north and did most of the building, which we were grateful for. These raised beds were assigned on first come, first served basis and included residents from Grafton and Triller Avenues, and a few from the wider neighbourhood who came upon the garden while it was being cleared and organized and asked if they could have one. They grew vegetables and flowers from spring to early autumn, and the beds were so popular that next year, a new design for the space is being worked on which will increase the number from nine to 12 beds. The diversity of vegetables and flowers in these beds really added a beautiful element to the whole space. Gardeners got to know each other as they exchanged information about their special flower and vegetable varieties. In some cases, this led to a camaraderie that led to shared responsibilities for watering when gardeners were unable to make it to the garden for whatever reason.
The other major part of the new garden design includes three large and two smaller communal beds which are maintained by volunteers–mostly the core group, but others have joined in from time to time, as we encouraged the individual bed holders to do, and ALL locals and passersby are always invited to come lend a hand in maintaining our community’s garden.
The bed by the sidewalk on Grafton is almost entirely native species including swamp milkweed, helenium, penstemon, zizia, eupatorium, geum, and others. All summer long we watched the monarchs, and bees and other pollinators flock to these when they bloomed. We are grateful for the grant from the Horticultural Societies of Parkdale and High Park for helping us re-establish this particular bed, as it helped in the establishment of the whole of the original garden in 2007.
A a second large bed at the back of the garden soon came into bloom with volunteers from previous years, including tulips, alliums, and stocks. As the seasons progressed, the bed filled with tomatoes, corn, pumpkins, kale, rhubarb, Swiss chard, and zucchini–lots of zucchini! It was also home to Chad’s experiment with cucamelons, and a volunteer stand of amaranth self-seeded at one end, while another volunteer, the perennial cup plant, the other. It made for both a beautiful and the most productive part of the garden. Many of our cherry tomatoes were donated by our neighbour on Queen St., Norman Orenstein who had lots of seedlings left over from his own balcony garden. We planted them throughout this bed and others, and they provided lots of snacking while weeding and watering. The star of this bed, however, was a giant pumpkin which weighed approximately 23 kilos when we harvested it in September!
The third of the large communal beds, along the middle was a veritable fluffball of white ammi (False Queen Anne’s Lace) which we seeded to ensure lots of food to attract pollinators that would help our vegetables along. As the ammi faded the bed became a colourful palette of velvety zinnia and cosmos that bloomed well into the fall. These are annuals which, for this first year were placeholders as we saw what else came up voluntarily and gave us an opportunity to plan for 2026 without committing to permanent plantings in this first year.
Two smaller communal beds included an herb garden with basil, thyme, summer savory, marjoram, sweet basil, and chamomile. The other was the Children’s Garden, led by Maria Nunes. All children were welcome, but the main participants were Coby Piorkowski, Cady and Anni Rice, and Rex Davis. They grew tomatoes, carrots, garlic, corn, spaghetti squash, radishes, pattypan squash, and calendula. And their garden also produced a clump of sunflowers at least 10 feet tall! The kids enjoyed tasting their fresh-from-the-earth vegetables, weeding, and watering, especially the latter, and have the makings of confident future gardeners. Bringing children to the garden is a goal and giving them their own space was important and proved to be very popular.
Workdays were every Wednesday evening and Saturdays from 10 until 12, with the Children’s Garden activities mainly on Saturday. During these workdays throughout the summer, we weeded and watered all of the communal beds although Chad did some extra watering during long dry spells. But we hope that more of you on Grafton and others from nearby streets will find some time to drop by during our gardening work days and take part in the few fairly easy chores like weeding and watering…. lots of watering! No experience necessary! And when you walk hurriedly by on your way to work or back home, you can say to yourself…. I helped make that beautiful place!
This was a year for learning, and we have taken many lessons away which will help make the 2026 gardening year more enjoyable and productive. Some of those were hard lessons. Like all gardens on public lands, we lost some of our vegetables and flowers to theft and vandalism. Sadly, we lost about half dozen of our pumpkins which had been earmarked for each of the families involved, to use for thanksgiving pie or Halloween, some squashes, and tomatoes. And our beautiful giant sunflowers all lost their heads after blooming when we’d hoped to let the seeds develop for winter forage for birds. We are taking some measures like some minimal fencing for 2026, and hope defining the space better will help deter bad behaviour.
But the more of us who are invested in this neighbourhood landmark, the more who will take a bit more ownership of it, meaning more eyes trained on the garden and hopefully, fewer opportunities for passersby to steal from or damage the garden.
I think I can speak for all when I say that it is a wonderful place to slow down and meet your neighbours, an opportunity to smell the flowers and take some home, to chomp on a fresh healthy snack that is a flavourful, juicy cherry tomato, and pick some fresh herbs for your dinner. It’s OUR garden. And throughout and at the end of the season, we can have more and bigger delicious potlucks in our own back forty.
