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This Gardens subsite developed with the kind assistance of the Toronto Parks and Trees Foundation
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If you love gardening, you can pitch in with the community gardens at Dufferin Grove Park (both food and decorative plants), or get your own city allotment garden plot (from the City not in Dufferin Park) for a small fee.
Community Gardens
All of Dufferin Grove Park's vegetable, native and flower gardens are community gardens. If you'd like to help keep them healthy and happy this summer or if you just want to get your hands dirty then leave a message at the rink house for the Jenny Cook of the park staff. 416-392-0913.
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Park Gardens
Welcome to the park gardens website. If you want to participate in gardening at the park or in the maintenance of this website, or if you have any questions or comments, please contact gardens@dufferinpark.ca.
Dufferin Grove Park has a variety of gardens including native plant beds, native tree groves, a little rooftop garden, and a naturalized savannah garden, as well as vegetable gardens.
The drop-in garden club helps maintain these gardens, and is open to everyone. You can join us to help out as often or seldom as you like. From spring to fall, we meet to seed, plant, compost, weed, harvest, prune, build garden beds, invent trellises, mulch, rake, build paths, and/or anything else that needs doing in the gardens. We welcome garden novices and experts alike -- the garden club is a great place to share what you know and/or pick up new tricks.
You can check out the latest update for the garden club on the gardening workboard.
If you have another idea about how you'd like to help with the gardens at the park, we are always happy to discuss new possibilities.
Park Gardens InfoClick on any folder below for details   Meadow Blazing Star Savannah in the CityThis garden is on the north side of the rink fence, in the northwest corner of the park.  Savannahs are open areas in the forest with scattered trees (usually oak or pine) whose discontinous tree canopy allows enough light in to support wildflowers, shrubs and grasses normally found in tallgrass prairies. Unlike meadows - which tend to evolve into forest as a result of the natural succession of species - savannahs are considered to be stable plant communities because of the unique ability each of the plants has to regenerate after forest fires. They are incredibly biodiverse habitats both in terms of the flora within them and the fauna that they support. Unfortunately they are also endangered in Ontario, as both urban and agricultural areas have gradually swallowed them up. |
Dufferin Grove gardens: a history The first community garden began in Dufferin Grove Park in 1993, one year after the City took out the last Parks-planted flower bed, citing lack of funds. The park looked so sad without any flowers that the first garden was dug by some mothers and little kids near the sandpit. read more >> Dufferin Grove Park Gardens in Spring:posted April 23, 2008 Here's a springtime photo gallery. The photos were taken in May 2009. By fall 2010, the little trees pictured in the gallery had quadrupled in size.  Pollinator GardensThe Pollinator Gardens project is creating gardens for native birds, bees, and butterflies. We use native plants to provide nectar, pollen, larval food and habitat. Our gardens are beautiful, educational, and help threatened native species. Our blog is our meeting spot. |
Gardening work bulletin board
Gardening sessions this week: Saturday May 12, 2-4pm; Wednesday May 16, 3-5:30pm.
This week's photo captures the park's trees last Saturday at 6pm. Their new green leaves are still shiny and delicate, and in the evening, the setting sun sets them aglow. Just where the sun is shining in this shot, the vegetable gardens are slowly filling with tiny sprouts (and 8-inch high pea plants, reaching for the fences). Behind the gardens on the rinkhouse window sills, the tomato plants are the tallest and bushiest we've grown yet. All of the rain we've had these past few days has given the plants outside (both wanted and unwanted) a boost, and one of our main tasks this week in the gardens will be weeding. We'll also be planting more seeds, caring for the plants still inside the building, and adding compost and mulch around our young trees and some of the perennial beds.
Gardening sessions this week: Saturday May 12, 2-4pm; Wednesday May 16, 3-5:30pm.
As always, we will conclude each session by sitting down together to enjoy some light refreshments.
In case anyone is interested, Friday May 11 will be the first Friday Night Supper of the season starting at 6pm by the big bake oven.
And a reminder about two other local events coming up this Saturday:
Horticultural Societies of Toronto and Parkdale Plant Fair is on Saturday, May 12, 10:30-1:30, 75 Lansdowne Avenue (at Seaforth). For details go to Plant Fair
The Ward 18 Community Environment Day is on Saturday, May 12, 10-2, held every year in the Dufferin Mall parking lot. Free leaf compost if you can transport it! And a good time to get rid of hazardous waste. For details go to Environment Days.
Gardening work bulletin board 2011
Gardening work bulletin board 2010
News 2012
We will be posting upcoming dates for garden events and workshops here. For the latest activities of the park's drop-in garden club, check out our gardening workboard.
Past workshops in 2012:
Related Links
Related Websites posted February 24, 2005 The Toronto Foodshare website has several pages about community gardening, such as:
 Green Thumbs Growing Things Website posted March 25, 2004 From Green Thumbs website: Children's gardening and natural science activities are important, especially for children in our neighbourhood [Riverdale] who live in apartments with little access to green space. It's also about celebrating nature's variety and healthy diversity, which includes us humans who've come from all over the world to this downtown Toronto neighbourhood. General Interest Websites
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Gardening StoriesThe Tomatoes of Bureaucracyposted March 25, 2004 [park gardening versus bureaucracy] Ever since 1974, the city has rented out allotment gardens. When we moved back in 1980 we put our name down. There were none left, but they said they'd call us if there's a cancellation. And there was one. We put the kids in the car and drove up to look. There it was, number 22: one plot in a tract of thirty-six, bounded on the east by a four-lane road...Read more >> Garden Stories from our newsletters, 2000-2002[September 2000] Gardens: This year the plentiful rain started the gardens off well, and of course the efforts of Arie Kemp yielded wonderful results, as he grew the most striking flowers from seed all over the park. Arie collects seed from the best stands of flowers that he can discover on his bike rides around the city. Read more >> Newspaper Clippingsposted October 9, 2004 Now Magazine Turning Tomates Into Sauce By Kyla Dixon-Muir. Mentions Dufferin Grove Park Garden, and our own work with bureaucracy. |