The grant we received from the Horticultural Societies of Parkdale & Toronto was critical to the success of our garden as it allowed us to purchase seeds, plants, soil and compost.

This Year’s Successes

The Garden Party is a giving garden. Over the past 19 years, we have been growing and donating herbs and vegetables initially to the Parkdale Activity Recreation Centre (PARC) and St. Francis Table, both located on Queen Street West in the Parkdale neighbourhood, and later expanding to other local food banks. This year, our donations primarily went to PARC and St. Francis Table, with an occasional donation to the Parkdale Food Bank.

We had our first day in the garden on April 26 – a cold Saturday with 7 brave volunteers showing up to work.

This year, we planted as many rows of pole beans as we had space, as well as bush beans. We also planted an early crop of spring peas and we focused on cherry tomatoes with a few

plants of larger beefsteak tomatoes. Kale, spinach, Swiss chard and lettuce, as well as our herbs, rounded out our main crops. We planted saved pea and bean seeds from 2024.

This year, we donated

• 207.35 Kg (457 lbs.) of fresh produce
• 192 herb bundles.

Between June 11, our first delivery, and October 16, one of our last, we made 30 deliveries. Our largest single harvest was on June 21 with 21.7 Kg (48 lb).

New Volunteers

We continued our regular Saturday morning gardening sessions with people signing up to water for specific weeks from June until September. We attracted more new volunteers this year than we have in the last few years.

We also had young campers from the Jardin Infantil Academy take on watering duties for one week this summer.

We had identified a day when participants from West Toronto KEYS to Inclusion could come to water the garden and learn about our initiative, but the day turned out to have a heat warning as it was 40C, so we had to cancel the event, and with the hot summer and number of days with poor air quality, we were unable to have them attend but hope we can plan this next year.

Garden Tours

The two churches that provide the land for our gardens, Redeemer Lutheran and St. Joan of Arc, held a blessing of the garden on September 28 that was attended by volunteer gardeners and members of the two churches. This event provided an opportunity for the congregants to learn more about the garden and see what was growing.

We also provided impromptu tours throughout the season to people who just stopped by on their way by the garden and explained the purpose of the garden and how we were a project of the Parkdale Hort.

Redeemer Lutheran Church held an outdoor summer concert series in July and into August which attracted many people from the neighbourhood. The concerts invited a free will offering to support the church’s food pantry and the emcee always mentioned The Garden Party and volunteers offered tours of the garden following the concert. At least one new volunteer came as a result of the concert series.

Research

Once again, we were asked to host two nest boxes to continue the research that was started last year by students at the B.U.G.S. Lab at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus. The boxes were in place from May to October to recruit solitary bees and wasps at low densities. The project aims to understand how temperature and urbanization affect cavity nesting bee communities by surveying cavity nesting bees over the summer months across the City of Toronto.

Donations and Other Funding

We received several donations of tomatillos and peppers from a member of Redeemer Lutheran Church which we were able to deliver to PARC along with our donations. We received a financial donation from the Swansea Horticultural Society in September

which was used to purchase a new hose and water wand. Redeemer Lutheran Church pays the cost of watering the garden.

Conclusion

The Garden Party would like to thank the Horticultural Societies of Parkdale & Toronto for your continued support and selecting us as one of the recipients of your Community Garden Projects for 2025. We know that the produce we were able to donate this year was especially welcome by PARC and St. Francis Table with the growing demand for their meal programs.