The garden’s caretaker says the damage feels deliberate—and she’s asking the public for help
A well-loved community garden in The Ward neighbourhood has been afflicted by near-constant vandalism over the last few months, devastating its caretaker.
Now, she’s hoping the community will come together to help her protect it.
Karen Houle has been the caretaker and volunteer coordinator for the The Two Rivers Huron Street Community garden for the last five years, planting and pruning fruit trees, weeding the garden, assembling new garden beds, building and running a composting system, teaching workshops and more.
It’s an unpaid position, but she does it out of love, to bring some magic to the community.
But a recent onslaught of vandalism has her feeling discouraged, wanting to quit.
Plants have been stolen, fences broken, branches snapped off of trees and fruit shrubs, killing three of them. Even the signs Houle has made asking people to be kind to the trees or not take from individual gardens have been ripped up and tossed onto the street.
Recently, the rocks she hauled there herself to line the trees, shrubs and paths, have been stolen.
“I want to quit every time I am there,” she said in a social media post pleading for support and solutions from neighbours.
Some vandalism is inevitable. In the last five years, the garden has had tree branches ripped down, art boxes smashed, locks broken, but it’s becoming more consistent, leaving plants damaged and gardeners discouraged.
But she said this feels deliberate.
In some cases, they’ve installed fencing, but people either smash it down or go over or under.
“That plum tree that I’ve been trying to protect, it’s had its branches broken every year, constantly, for five years,” she said.
One year the plum tree was broken right down to its stump.
“Year after year, people just go through and break the trees,” she said.
An orchardist friend told her just this week that a quince tree in the garden isn’t going to make it after the damage it suffered last year.
An apple tree along the path was damaged, and is now growing a fungus through the broken bark, “so it’s gonna die,” she said.
“Three of the trees I bought died. The others, they’ll just have setbacks. They won’t produce fruit for a few years, which is a shame, because otherwise they would produce fruit continuously for (the community),” she said.
“I feel a deep sadness inside. Kind of crushing,” she said. “Which is a feeling I try to fight.”
For Houle, community gardens have always been a source of healing, for both the environment and the people around it.
“People feel better when they see something that’s being cared for,” she said. “We have this magical little pocket, so to see things that are being wrecked and destroyed and damaged, the biggest thing I feel is, what’s the point? And I don’t want to have that feeling.”
One woman was trying out gardening this year for the first time, tentatively, and all her plants were stolen.
“She might not come back,” she said.
“Even me trying to get new people out… I feel like I have to say, your stuff might get stolen. Well shit, who’s gonna want to do (it then)?”
Not wanting to install security cameras, she reached out to the community on social media looking for ideas about what to do next.
While a number of people speculated about who could be doing it, she said that’s besides the point.
“That’s irrelevant,” she said. “I don’t want to go there. What I want to do is collectively move towards understanding that this is ours, and I’m doing this work because I love this space, and I need some support.”
So far the only solution she’s thought of is installing a fence, though she said that would be costly and would likely need a wealthy benefactor.
In the meantime, she hopes if people use the space more it will deter any vandals.
“All I can think of right now is to put the word out to you, the neighbours, who also love and use that spot,” she said in her post. “Can you please go there more often?”
She emphasized the space is for the broader community, not just those with plots inside. People are welcome to gather to enjoy the sights, harvest food from the community-labelled plots, and to use the compost system and pizza oven.
Other ideas of making the space more accessible to the public include installing a stage for performers and new benches.
She’s also considering organizing something where once a week someone fires up the pizza oven, or perhaps a restaurant could use the space for a pop up event.
Moving forward, Houle plans to organize a community meeting either at the garden or nearby to get people involved and discuss ideas to protect and improve the space. The details of that meeting will be available in the weeks to come.
“Right now we’ve got this amazing thing, and it would be great to keep it going and make it even better,” she said.
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