A garden has a way of extending beyond the space where it starts.
A spare seedling is passed on. A summer harvest ends up in jars months later. Something learned from one gardener is picked up by another.
Over the summer, Gazette photographer Tim Snow spent time with Montreal-area growers working in spaces ranging from apartment balconies to suburban backyards.
The first instalment of this photo essay looks at four home growers and the different ways they use, share and make the most of what they produce.
Lena Rye lives in an apartment in Verdun, yet manages to grow some of her own produce on her balcony. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
“I’ve done a lot of trial and error”
Lena Rye, Verdun
Rye’s balcony has become a place where things get second lives.
Plants headed for the garbage come home with her. Mystery seeds get planted just to see what they might become. Sumac gathered elsewhere hangs to dry. And every summer, a little more of the roughly five-by-15-foot space disappears beneath something green.
“I just sort of kept adding to it because I got really excited,” Rye said.
This is her third year gardening on the Verdun balcony, where morning and early-afternoon sun have proved enough for five kinds of tomatoes, several peppers, basil, chives and whatever else survives her experiments.
There have been failures.
An eggplant was “not happy.” Sweet potatoes delivered only greens. Potatoes emerged about the size of a dime or a loonie.
“I’ve done a lot of trial and error,” Rye said, “and a lot of error.”
But that may be part of why she likes it.
This is the third year Lena Rye has tended to a garden on her Verdun balcony. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
She has learned that cherry tomatoes are quicker to reward the effort. Snow peas can be picked and eaten straight from the vine. And basil, harvested from the top before it flowers, appears to have no intention of running out.
“I have unlimited basil all summer.”
The garden has not made the grocery store obsolete. Rye says herbs make the most obvious difference. The rest arrives less predictably: a tomato that suddenly needs eating, a handful of peas, a cucumber that can decide what dinner becomes.
“Every time you go out there, there’s snacks,” she said.
This year, her partner and roommate began helping with the watering. Rye said they started talking about how much they liked stepping outside first thing in the morning, waking up among the plants.
Lena Rye and her partner enjoy stepping outside first thing in the morning, waking up among the plants in their Verdun balcony garden. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
For someone intimidated by starting, Rye recommends ignoring the idea of a garden entirely.
Buy one tomato seedling.
Then you need a pot. Then some soil.
“The second that you see how quickly it starts growing,” she said, “it gets really exciting.”
The danger, perhaps, is that one pot rarely remains one pot.
Geneviève Lussier harvests cherries from her home garden in Pointe-Claire. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
“To everything there is a season”
Geneviève Lussier, Pointe-Claire
Lussier has been gardening for about 20 years, with a setup that now stretches across two spaces.
At home in Pointe-Claire, mature trees leave much of her yard in shade. Sour cherries, haskaps, raspberries, mulberries and currants do well there, while tomatoes and hot peppers are squeezed into the sunnier spots she can find.
For vegetables that need more light, she gardens at Patchwork Farm in Senneville.
“I was really lucky to get a spot,” she said.
Lussier’s interest in growing food goes back to her years at Concordia University, where she became involved with Le Frigo Vert, a student-run health food store and community space, and the People’s Potato, a student-run vegan soup kitchen offering free or pay-what-you-can meals. She baked bread in their kitchens and became interested in food sovereignty, grassroots movements and affordable food.
“Through that, I started doing my own gardening.”
Over time, some of what she grows has simply disappeared from her shopping list.
“I don’t buy sour cherries. I don’t buy mulberries. I don’t buy raspberries.”
Over time, some of what Geneviève Lussier grows has disappeared from her shopping list. “I don’t buy sour cherries. I don’t buy mulberries. I don’t buy raspberries.” Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
Patchwork brought something different.
At the beginning of the season, gardeners share extra seedlings. Through the summer, they compare notes on hornworms and squash beetles, and the conversations often drift well beyond gardening.
“It’s a real community feel,” Lussier said. “Gardeners are some of the most generous people you’ll ever meet.
“I’m in a privileged position where I have the time and the space to go garden a lot of my own food,” she said. “But not everybody is in that position.”
Geneviève Lussier harvests garlic from her home garden in Pointe-Claire. She also gardens at Patchwork Farm in Senneville, a setting that has “a real community feel,” she says. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
After two decades of gardening, Lussier has also become comfortable with the parts of the year when nothing needs to happen.
“To everything there is a season,” she said. “We can kind of say goodbye to some things and say hello to new things.”
By fall, she is ready to put the garden away for a while. By spring, she said, she is equally ready to see the other gardeners again.
Shawn Beeby harvests garlic from his front yard in Pincourt. The garden bed produced about 140 heads of garlic, which will be added to pasta sauce alongside tomatoes from his backyard garden. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
“I’d rather give stuff away than sell it”
Shawn Beeby, Pincourt
By Christmas, much of Beeby’s summer garden is in jars.
Tomatoes have become sauce. Cucumbers have become pickles. Beets have been pickled, garlic cured and tucked alongside them. Beeby packs it all into baskets and gives them to friends and family.
“I’d rather give stuff away than sell it, to be honest,” he said.
This year, Beeby planted 40 Roma tomato plants, along with peppers, melons, winter squash, strawberries and potatoes. One four-by-eight-foot garden bed produced about 140 heads of garlic.
But for Beeby, harvesting is only the midpoint.
Shawn Beeby picks his tomatoes right before they ripen, allowing them to reach their full potential before he makes them into sauce. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
When the tomatoes ripen in late summer, the work shifts from his garden to the kitchen. They are processed into sauce, cooked down and sealed in batches using a pressure canner. Last year, in his first season making sauce from his own tomatoes on that scale, he filled roughly 80 jars.
Some went into the family’s Christmas lasagna. The rest joined the gift baskets.
Beeby has been giving homemade food at Christmas for years — raspberry and strawberry jam came before the sauce — but producing the ingredients himself added another satisfaction.
He even worked out the cost.
By his calculation, last year’s sauce came to about $1.97 a jar, including the jar itself.
“You’re not saving millions,” he said. “But yeah, and it’s better. It’s all fresh, grown in your garden.”
Shawn Beeby uses a machine to separate pulp from juice as he prepares tomatoes in his house in Pincourt. Beeby will cook the sauce down, jar it, and give it away to family and friends as Christmas gifts, along with jars of homemade pickles. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
The scale of the garden grew after Beeby’s father, a lifelong vegetable gardener, died in 2017. Beeby had grown a few things before then, but decided afterward to take it further.
“I said, ‘Well, I better carry on this tradition.’
“I’m also doing it 10 times bigger than he did it,” Beeby said. “Show-off.”
The result is more food than Beeby intends to keep — which suits him just fine.
Abigail Léger and her son Remington Boone Léger tend to their backyard garden in Île-Bizard. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
“I hope they’re taking these little lessons”
Abigail Léger, Île-Bizard
Léger’s six-year-old son, Remington, chose butternut squash for a simple reason: he likes the soup.
So he picked the plants himself, put them into the family’s Île-Bizard garden and waited.
By the end of the summer, he had 10 squashes.
“He was over the moon,” Léger said. “Very proud of his harvest.”
That small journey — from deciding what to grow to eventually eating it — is exactly what Léger wants her children to experience.
Her two oldest boys, 11 and 13, have mostly moved on from digging in the dirt, though they still help outside. The younger three are more likely to be beside her in the garden or in the kitchen afterwards.
The produce grown by Abigail Léger is used for homemade sauces, pickles, salsa and other preserves to help feed her family. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
This summer, cucumbers became about 10 jars of pickles. Tomatoes and onions went into salsa, with one of Léger’s younger sons helping to make it.
“It’s an all-hands-on-deck kind of thing,” she said.
And every so often, Léger notices that something she’s shown them has stuck.
Her daughter, for example, now knows what to do with the family’s raspberry bushes when spring comes.
“She’ll remember, ‘Oh, I’ve got to cut away the dead wood,’” Léger said. “I hope they’re taking these little lessons, but it looks like they’re applying it.”
Léger learned much the same way herself. She started gardening about a decade ago, mostly through experimentation, with practical advice from a mother-in-law she says has “the best green thumb” of anyone she knows.
Abigail Léger’s children, including Remington Boone Léger, help her in the family’s Île-Bizard garden. Tim Snow / Montreal Gazette
Now they exchange plants and seeds. Beans are left to dry so their seeds can be saved for the following year. Across the street, neighbours who keep bees sometimes trade fresh honey for produce.
“It just organically came about,” Léger said. “Making little connections.”
She is clear that a backyard garden is not going to feed a household of seven on its own.
The point for her is what the children pick up along the way.
“I hope it’s all good memories,” Léger said. “And I hope one day they’ll have a little desire anyways to get back into the garden like their mom did.”
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I’m a reporter at the Montreal Gazette, covering breaking news and the issues affecting communities across Montreal. I believe some of the most interesting stories begin with an ordinary conversation.
amclaughlin@postmedia.com
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