- Trusting Wilder roof garden community

This is a love letter to the roof garden community that has nourished me and helped grow my family over the past decade.

In the beginning

We started as strangers who all shared the same, new co-op housing building and a few thousand square feet of garden in the sky. It was 2011.

We put our heads together and let our hearts dream of how this shared space could be the seed of what we hoped would become our strong, vibrant community.

Instead of dividing our space up into sections for individual gardeners to tend, our fledgling community voted to work together to make decisions, do the work, and enjoy the harvest. We created a communal, organic, roof garden.

A decade on

Over ten years our roof garden community grew piles of peas and beans. We grew flowers and potatoes. We carted wheelbarrows of horse manure and bales of hay up the elevators. Wow, did that make a mess! And so many kind neighbours cleaned it up.

While these garden tasks are certainly accomplishments, I see something much grander that is blossoming from our efforts. To my eyes, our roof garden has grown us! It is a project that provides us the opportunity to nurture a community of humans.

The community we cultivate

While tending our roof gardens, we have connected with each other, nature, and with the community outside our housing co-op. We have also created a space to nourish our most tender moments. Here are just a few of the non-plant, less tangible things I’ve observed growing in our roof gardens.

Friendships began as we heard each other’s stories while weeding, often in the rain.

We honoured our differences (ages, cultures, languages) as we worked through the more mundane tasks of where to put the tomatoes this year or how to raise money to improve the irrigation system.

We negotiated space, ideas, personalities, and dreams.

We learned about patience, pruning, and pollination.

We built community as we built the soil.

Our thirst for tending nature while living amidst concrete, steel and glass has been quenched with juicy strawberries.

In addition to feeding each other, we fed birds and butterflies, mice, and slugs.

Wildlife took refuge in our garden. More than once, mother ducks and geese nestled under the bushes to lay and hatch their babies. Then we had the honour of safely guiding their young down 5 flights of stairs to the park.

We forged relationships with local bee experts and businesses to start a beehive. We supported the hive and observed it swell, multiply, and then die back completely. This is a place where we try our best, practice failing, and feel brave and supported to try again.

Among the roof garden fruit trees, we celebrated birthdays, marriages, and the joy of summer bbq with friends.

This oasis that grows has become a place to rest and a place to remember those we have loved.

As perennials planted by past neighbours bloom again, we remember them. We miss them. We feel grateful for the love they shared here.

As we part ways

Our family is leaving this co-op and roof garden community. We are both excited for adventures ahead and sad for the connections we must leave behind. I take with me a heart full of gratitude for all the nourishment that our growing community has given us.

Like the apple tree in the North garden that bears the most, and best, juicy crispies, I know that I have grown and changed because I was planted here for a time too.

Our babies crawled in the dirt and smothered their faces pink with raspberries. They also observed the adults around them work together – to grow. They will carry that with them always.

So will I.

All photos by Kerrie O’Donnell, except where credited otherwise. Images of friends and neighbours used with permission.

Resting Rebel

Write the Rain

3 Comments

Kathleen Marie Bohan
June 15, 2021

Beautiful! I feel the same way, having this be my second home over the same time. I will miss the rasberries and blackberries, but most importantly the people/friends I have made.