Hanna Davidson tends to her potato patch in the West Ritchie Community Garden.
For four seasons now, there is only one thing that Hanna Davidson has planted in her garden box: potatoes. It’s not because she’s addicted to spuds, although she likes them just fine. It’s not because they’re the most efficient thing to grow in the relatively small box, or because she has a line on seed potatoes, or because she’s trying different varieties, either.
“When I looked it up, everyone said they were the easiest thing to grow,” Davidson admits. “I’m not a gardener. What I am is an abandoned space hater.”
One of the 24 garden boxes that have helped transform the former abandoned space in West Ritchie.
What is now the West Ritchie Community Garden began as an abandoned stretch of what would have been 79 ave, between the southside CN rail yard and the condo Davidson calls home. For close to 20 years, the only things that sprouted up on the site were weeds and illegally dumped garbage — including, most notably, an old excavator that nobody was willing to lay claim to.
That began to change in 2020, when Davidson was laid off in the midst of the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. With a lot more time to look out from her balcony, she made transforming the fallow piece of land into her personal mission. “There’s only so many hours you can apply for jobs,” she notes dryly.
When she began, Davidson didn’t much care what could go in there: her goal was to make a space that people in the neighbourhood would actually use. Through research, she discovered a $5000 grant from Sustainable Food Edmonton, and figured the best project was the one that came with funding. Though, of course, she understood full well what bringing some plant life into the neighbourhood would mean.
Just seeing that someone cares enough to be back there — the energy changes. It feels different, it feels like a place to be
“There’s actually no public green space on this side of Whyte Ave between 99th and Calgary Trail — really zero,” Davidson explains. “Given how many people around here don’t have any kind of yard, it seemed like the kind of place that people in the neighbourhood needed.”
With a successful application, Davidson then turned to the Ritchie Community League. As it happened, they had long been looking for a way to improve the space — the previous community project had been getting the city to remove the excavator — and were quite happy to find an eager community member who was happy to take on the work.
Convenience pretty quickly gave way to community, though. Applications came in for a garden box as soon as the League posted them (one person even came by to ask about a spot when he overheard us talking about them at a local coffee shop). Davidson and the gardeners hooked up with Ritchie’s Men’s Shed program for help with all aspects of transforming the space. Together they have built 26 garden boxes, weeded and mulched the entire space, and added picnic tables, rain barrels, a water station and a welcome sign. Far from just pitching in, the Men’s shedders have started taking ownership over the increasingly green space.
Members of the Ritchie Men’s Shed program have made the garden a true community effort, helping with mulching, signage and repairs.
“Just last weekend, I noticed that someone had repaired one of the picnic tables,” Davidson points out. I didn’t ask anybody to do that — I didn’t even notice it needed to be fixed. I assume one of them just came by and did it.”
The locals aren’t the only ones who have taken notice, either. Last fall, the city formally rezoned the space, from a roadway to a park space. Though Davidson did not formally lobby for the change, it’s fairly obvious to anyone who passes by that the space is no longer just waiting for cars, and it’s obvious that the city took notice. And though it’s mostly just a bit of bureaucracy, it does open up several more possibilities, including some city maintenance, a potential food forest and, eventually, formal paths and a greenway through the space.
Davidson knows that these will take time, but she has also already begun to enjoy the fruits — or, anyway, the potatoes — of her labours. Someone else has stepped up to oversee the garden from the Community League perspective. The Community Garden has returning members, regular meet-ups — including the season-launching block party May 31 — and Davidson has personally witnessed her neighbours having sandwiches, drinking coffee and otherwise strolling through and enjoying a space that, just five years ago, was nothing but gravel and garbage. There’s more to be done, but it’s already become a true community space.
“Just seeing that someone cares enough to be back there — the energy changes,” says Davidson. “It feels different, it feels like a place to be.”
