Community Garden

I've been trying to rent a plot at the local community garden.

There's a fenced off portion of land near where I live with sectioned areas of gardening space. All of my neighbours seem to know someone whose used it, but nobody has done so personally.

It doesn't exactly have an address, but a vague Google of the area, plus "Community Garden" brought up what I needed to know. Apparently it's part of something called the "Community Garden Council of Waterloo Region".

http://community-gardens.ca/content/about-us

On the page for my local garden, I got the phone number and address for a local community centre. This was surprising to me, as I'd lived here for some months and had not noticed a community centre. I called them but got voice mail, then decided to go to the address.

So this part of the story might be quite common, but it's the first time I'd ever run across something like this, so it seems worth telling. Following the instructions to the community centre led me to a townhouse complex. My perspective of a "Community Centre" is a stand-alone structure with a variety of resources, and this didn't quite fit that perception. I found the relevant address in front of a very standard-looking home, except this one was marked with the letter "A". To find the centre, I walked down the street of homes with identical numbers but increasing alphabet letters. Eventually, I came across a unit with a sign saying "Community Centre" in the window, and a sign saying "Open".

It looked like all the other units, so I was conflicted on whether I should knock on the door (typical of a privately owned space) or if I should just enter (typical of a public access space).

I decided to just go in. The inside looked like someone's home. Someone called out to ask who'd come in. I stammered something about not knowing whether or not I was in the right place. The people who greeted me looked like family, furthering the "home-image", but they said they were the ones who ran the community garden. The main guy who started it wasn't there, so they left him a note to call me back.

He didn't call me back, and I've called twice more and have visited three more times. Each time I've visited has been inside usual business hours, but other than the first encounter, it's been closed. Today, I asked a guy sitting outside if he knew what the hours for the centre were, and he said it was pretty random.

It's almost like a family just claimed some unused land, told people that if they wanted access, they'd have to pay, and put up a "Community Centre" sign in front of their window, deciding on a whim when they felt up to having the Centre open to the public. Maybe I could do that.

I've called out several people working inside the Community Garden. When I asked the first guy how to rent a plot, he said he didn't know. When I asked him how he did it, he said it was for a friend. Today, I asked a woman and she just looked at me and shook her head sadly...

Creepy, creepy Community Garden dynamics.