Gardener James Bay

By Marion Yas

Garden Committee Member, James Bay Neighbourhood Association

Food, gardens, and James Bay—I love them all! And this summer, I discovered I could unite the three by volunteering with a local food-gardening project. Developed by the James Bay Neighbourhood Association (JBNA), this recent initiative to encourage food production in James Bay ranges from creating an inventory of present-day gardening, to coordinating work-bees of local gardeners.

So here I am working on my assignment for the JBNA Garden Committee: to interview residents about their gardens and their overall views about gardening in James Bay. For my first submission, I invite you for a brief tour of a neighbour's garden not far from Beacon Hill Park.

This was the year for berries and edible flowers. My neighbour's tomato plants had rampantly produced berries, the ones furthest from the ocean winds ripening to perfection. The prickles of the gooseberry, raspberry, and blackberry shrubs helped protect their fruit, but the ever-bearing strawberry plants on old bent-branch chair (way above the marauding European slugs) were well-pruned by regular deer visitors.

With a little help from West Coast seeds online site, we found that the herb garden shared with other residents of the multi-family building provided a wide array of colourful and tasty flowers, from chives, dill, lavender, mint, rose, rosemary, and sage.

Growing in amongst the chard, lettuce, and quinoa, were more plants with edible flowers: arugula, calendula, clover, dandelion, fennel, fuchsia, garlic, Johnny-Jump-Up, nasturtium, edible pea (nb sweet pea fruit and flowers are poisonous), squash, and honeysuckle growing along the fence (berries and rest of plant are poisonous).

Have a look at your own flowers, but make sure that they are from edible varieties that have been organically grown before sampling.

Over the year, and over the growing seasons, I hope you will invite me into your home food gardens—back yard, front yard, balcony...if you are growing food there, I would love to see it. Please contact me through the JBNA, at jbna@vcn.bc.ca, if you would like your garden to be highlighted in an upcoming issue.