Urban Agriculture
Who We Are
Since 2011, From the Root to the City has been growing food on the unceded territory of Tiohtià:ke (Montreal), engaging the community in immersive gardening in the heart of downtown. We aim to increase food sovereignty in our neighborhood, and increase awareness on both environmental and food security issues through hands-on educational opportunities, often in collaboration with other like-minded organizations in the area. While the mission is to grow food, it has become so much more than that throughout the past years, and we strive to maintain our commitments to soil health, reciprocity, and empowering young people who are passionate about people and about food justice. We have high hopes for the program, which is continually evolving, just like the community we connect with.
Our Mission for the Ground
We are committed to healthy soil practices on all of our sites. Between our sites, we seek to find a balance between productive market gardening and intentional care for the soil in which we work. Alongside our produce, we plant indigenous edible and medicinal plants. We source our seeds and soil amendments from our suppliers in Montreal and greater Quebec, and practice organic and regenerative agriculture to build healthy soil ecosystems.
Our Mission for Youth
We are committed to providing young people with job training in community work and agriculture work, setting them up to go on to careers in one or both of these fields. Whether involved with us as summer staff, interns, or volunteers, we love to see young people grow in their knowledge of meaningful work, local food systems, and the natural world.
Our Mission for the Community
We are committed to using food as a way of connecting to our community at multiple scales, which includes recipients of our produce, passing neighbors, volunteers, staff, site partners, and more. We want to give back to the community by growing food that people want to eat, exchanging knowledge, and gratefully sharing our access to precious greenspace downtown.
Our Sites
Concordia Visual Arts Building
The “VA” is our oldest site! We began there in 2013, and have been working on building organic matter in our soil all along the way. Although many of our sites have come and gone over the years, our longevity at the VA allows us to track the program’s overall progress. The VA’s combination of beautiful sun – threatened recently by the erection of new skyscrapers – and sheltering wall make it an ideal location for growing plants that prefer the heat. Certain years, like 2022, we choose to fallow our land for the majority of the season, prioritizing cover crops and nutrient-generous varieties over productive market gardening. While on the surface, it might not seem like much is going on, slowly we’re facilitating more and more life teeming beneath the soil.
Evangel Pentecostal Church
We installed our garden space at Evangel in 2017, in partnership with the church and Urban Seedling. The garden continues to be our flagship for partnerships with faith organizations. The Evangel site consists of raised beds of several sizes, where we grow indigenous herbs and edible flowers, as well as perennial food plants like bunching onion, rhubarb, and sunchokes. The produce in this garden is designated for neighborhood use, so anyone passing by is welcome to help themselves to harvest, or at least to sit and take in the sun!
Versailles Community Gardens
At Versailles, we tend a plot on behalf of the Native Women’s Shelter, with the hopes of expanding our relationship with the shelter and its residents, along with our friends within the VCG community. We host weekly gardening programming for clients of the NWSM, and grow a mix of perennial edible plants, flowers, beans, squash, medicinal herbs and teas. In 2022, this site will also serve as a point of connection between the Native Women’s Shelter and those involved with Innovation Youth community education programs!
Mary, Queen of the World
Our partnership with the Diocese of Montreal at the Cathedrale Marie-Reine-du-Monde is among one of our most ambitious. This Heritage site is multifunctional and heavily trafficked, with lots of potential for projects beyond just urban agriculture. In the future, we hope to renaturalize lawn space with indigenous grasses that will be welcoming for recreational use, create flower beds and labyrinths for use as prayer and meditation spaces, including plants in homage to Mary herself, for whom the Cathedral is named. For now, in 2022, we will focus on maintaining our first perennial flower garden, while continuing to cultivate herbs and produce for use by Innovation Youth and the residents of the cathedral.
Hector Toe-Blake Park
We opened this site in the summer of 2020 in collaboration with the City of Montreal, who provided our organization with three beautiful cedar boxes. Our site at HTB, which neighbors our organization, is primarily tailored for production, for use by Innovation Youth. However, as a residential park, families and individuals who enjoy this rare wooded area are invited to responsibly harvest here as well. Due to its location and ideal growing conditions, this site is often used at the start of the season as an educational space: we open up our work sessions to summer staff, volunteers, and to the public. It is also usually here that we choose to experiment with different soil measures and plant varieties.
Roundhouse Cafe
In partnership with L'Itinéraire and the Cafe de la Maison Ronde, we manage three planters for use by Innovation Youth, the Cafe de la Maison Ronde, and the community of Cabot Square. The planters, provided by the City of Montreal in 2018, feature a mix of edible flowers, leafy vegetables, herbs, and ornamental flowers for pollinators.
Delta Hotel
Our most eastern location is now our largest production site, and it also is our newest site. 2022 has brought us into partnership with Delta Hotel, who accommodate us in a beautiful enclosed green space close to McGill University and allow us to practically double our production output. Urban agriculture takes on its fullest definition here; we’ve been gifted with many hands to help us transform an overgrown area into the closest thing we have to farm raised beds. We plan on using this site to connect with those on the east side of downtown, and as a host site for groups keen to participate in urban agriculture projects.
Gardening Education Programs
From the Root to the City
Every Summer, From the Root to the City welcomes interns between the ages of 14 and 22, who will work three days each week, rotating through all the zones of the project, including a rotation at Ferme de l’Ile Montreal, a partner farm on the West Island. Over the course of eight weeks (starting June 28th and ending August 20th), they will be involved in preparing soil, planting, caretaking, harvesting, and in transforming produce for the Innovation Assistance food bank. They will also participate in the environmental education activities organised by the program, including both giving and being participants in workshops, engaging with younger children, and teaching neighbourhood families about the produce we provide.
Garden Club
In partnership with the Innovation Youth Children’s Library, we offer a Garden Club during the summer. The Garden Club is open to all children aged 6-11 who are interested in or curious about the environment, growing food, and learning about our city’s green spaces. Activities are primarily focused on our gardens, with lots of opportunities to ask questions and get silly! Depending on provincial health restrictions, the Garden Club may also do some cooking.
Check our social media in May for more information on registration!
Get Involved with Us!
✽
Get Involved with Us! ✽
Individuals or groups looking to get involved? We offer volunteers and volunteer groups recurring or one-time volunteer sessions, depending on your desired level of involvement!
We welcome your support, both in the form of donations and in the form of prayer.
Please click here to donate (specify Urban Agriculture), and follow us on Instagram to see prayer requests and keep an eye out on what’s going on in the gardens!
We post updates on Instagram regularly through April-October. Our page is the best way to keep with what’s happening in all of our gardens and to get more information about our events!
For questions or conversations regarding partnerships, events, employment, or volunteering, reach out to our Urban Agriculture Coordinator.
