For sure, you need a place that feels right. We thought you might like the already dug and good-soil gardens near the bake oven, since making new planting beds means digging down into hard ground -- which is tough in a park, where the ground has been compacted by so many feet for over a hundred years.

But as you say, the location near the construction area has its own problems. The workers have been bending over backwards to be helpful but there's nothing they can do about the noise and the trucks going in and out.

The city's Parks Department manager assigned our group the location where the circle of planter boxes is now. Those boxes and the existing gardens I showed you are the only places where we are allowed to garden.

So, you'll need to contact city staff directly. You can ask them for a site meeting and I bet they'll be very interested in your request.

The people for you to contact are: Cheryl.MacDonald@toronto.ca (recreation manager) and Peter.White@toronto.ca (parks manager). Plus you might want to cc or directly contact the general manager (Janie.Romoff@toronto.ca). And I think the local city councillor, Ana.Bailao@toronto.ca can also be a great help in getting the permissions you need.

Looking forward to seeing you in the park!

There was a community member passing by on Sunday and saw you and another person removing plants and removing a Prairie Sage plug from our community garden.

We also noticed that our sweetgrass has been stepped on, and treated as if it was a weed.

We would like to ask you to please not touch our gardens. We are a community BIPOC garden and have volunteers looking after our medicine gardens. As well, Prairie Sage is a sacred plant and should not be transplanted into another garden without our permission.

I know this may have been done as an assumed favour, but as an Indigenous led collective, consent, including from the land, is extremely important to us, and we did not consent for you to be working in our garden in any capacity.

We are upset and alarmed by this and we ask you to please not work in our gardens without our permission anymore.

Plant Life Team: I am sorry that you are upset and alarmed by me rescuing two clumps of wild white daisies and for taking a small sage plant to add to the park herb garden, for everyone to enjoy. We did not disrespect the sweet grass. I actually shared sweet grass knowledge with the volunteer while we were digging up the white daisies (to move to another garden area). Last year a neighborhood gardener gifted a patch of sweet grass to the Garden Co-op and that patch has spread and is thriving under a rose bush. We are sharing respect for, and knowledge of, sweet grass, with the Co-op volunteers and park users passing by.

In "Braiding Sweetgrass" Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants" by Robin Wall Kimmerer, the author writes: "the braid of sweet grass is woven from three strands: Indigenous ways of knowing, scientific knowledge, and the story of an Anishinabekwe scientist trying to bring them together in service to what matters most. It is an intertwining of science, spirit, and story--old stories and new ones that can be medicine for our broken relationship with earth, a pharmacopoeia of healing stories that allow us to imagine a different relationship, in which people and land are good medicine for each other."

The two youth garden beds looked abandoned. The medicine garden seems to be overrun with 'weeds' and looked uncared for. The cedar trees are being smothered by wild plants. A few weeks ago I heard through the grapevine that the youth group had found another garden site in Etobicoke. The DGP Garden Co-op has been working in the gardens since early April. We haven't seen any activity around the two youth garden beds, so it seemed like the project was abandoned. The Co-op did not receive any information about the youth gardens continuing.

The DGP Garden Co-op has no budget. Everything we have achieved has been done with the help of the neighborhood and community...all herb/vegetable/flower plants and seeds have been gifted. An important part of the Garden Co-op is the cooperation of the volunteers and the neighborhood community, and the sharing of plants and plant knowledge. The DGP Garden Co-op has spent two years, many days and many hours, rescuing plants/bushes/small trees from the park renovation construction zone and spreading these plants throughout the park.

We also share plants with people in the community...sage, dill, native flowers. Kimmerer writes about generosity being simultaneously a moral and material imperative where the well-being of one is linked to the well-being of all...wealth that is measured by having enough to give away. Our raised planter beds are 'plant nurseries' providing so many plants that we can spread the plant 'wealth' around to other areas of the park to provide important habitat and sustenance for the birds and bees and other important creatures.

Thank you for letting the DGP Garden Co-op know that the youth gardens are not abandoned. This garden season we are again happy to share Garden Co-op garden hoses with the youth group. During the winter months, the Garden Co-op stored the youth group wheelbarrow in the garden shed, but in early spring, shortly after we returned the wheelbarrow back beside the compost bins, the youth wheelbarrow disappeared. Also, there are several bags of ? by the compost bins which may belong to the youth group.

In the meantime, we will continue to respect the youth garden space. We will return the small sage plant to the medicine garden. And, we look forward to seeing the youth group back in Dufferin Grove Park.

We would like to meet Virtually to discuss the Code of Conduct policy and ensure it is clear.

Upon conclusion of the meeting, we will determine a date and time to meet with Dufferin Grove Community Garden volunteers to reiterate those expectations.

You will receive an email with instructions shortly

Skylar,

We are saddened at the defensiveness of your email, and the use of Indigenous literatures as a justification for damaging our garden and stealing sage.

Our Prairie Sage, other plant relations, and animal relations, do not need your “saving”. Our garden is taken care of in a way in which we see fit, namely, honouring each plant that has emerged and grown in our garden, including what you would consider “weeds”. The fact you felt the need to go into our space, without permission, take from our medicine plot, and then use Indigenous literatures to justify your behaviour is emblematic of white territoriality. Our sage is grown and then harvested at the end of and between seasons to go to Indigenous people in our communities. They are not regular garden sage. We use this medicine for ceremony. On top of this, you have our email. If you did not have the Plant Life email, you do have Kailee’s contact information. You could have sent a message or asked permission but chose not to.

Further, Sweetgrass teachings, and all teachings surrounding medicines are not something we need a reminder of from you or any settler gardner. We did not remove much of the weeds as we found a nest in the middle of our medicine garden earlier this season. This community garden is not only home to human community but to all our relations.

We are not a part of your co-op, and we do not want to be. We do not want you in our space, and we ask you again, please do not take our medicines as they are for Black and Indigenous youth. Please do not assume authority over our space because you have read Indigenous literatures and feel you have assumed responsibility to our plots.

Indigenous gardening and settler gardening come from completely different paradigms, and this is exemplary of how settler gardeners can be harmful, and triggering to Indigenous Peoples.

We ask for no further correspondence and respectful boundaries over our medicine garden plots. We are ccing parks to ensure our requests are respected.

Plant Life Team