Proposed interim guidelines for Victoria’s boulevard gardens are weeding out young people and renters — the very people they should be trying to reach, says Coun. Lisa Helps.
“We’re not in a depression, but we are in a city where it’s really expensive for young people to live here and the cost of food and the cost of living all adds up,” Helps said.
Under proposed guidelines to be discussed by councillors Thursday, property owners would be allowed to develop gardens on city-owned boulevards — strips of grass that abut their lots. Gardening wouldn’t be allowed on the estimated 25 per cent of boulevards that are maintained by the city through the existing taxed boulevard program.
“The whole push for boulevard gardening is coming from, to put it kind of bluntly, my generation and those younger who for the most part are renters,” Helps said.
“They want to be able to grow food. They want to grow food on public land. They’re responsible. They understand it’s a public space and it’s a privilege. … It seems there are more barriers than the ability to enable this to happen in a timely and effective way.”
Helps, 38, who herself has maintained a boulevard garden, said an element of common sense is missing from the suggested guidelines that were adapted from Vancouver’s guidelines.
City staff, in a report to council, suggest there’s a challenge in allowing renters to create gardens on city boulevards.
“For instance, a new property owner takes possession and does not want to tend a boulevard garden and it is left to go to weeds. Rental tenancy changes can be much more frequent and adds the additional issue of due notice to their landlord. Finally issues can arise with people installing gardens in front of property that is not theirs and for which they do not have permission. It is recommended that the guidelines apply to property owners only,” the report says.
Should renters wish to garden they would need consent of their landlord, staff say, and renters should not be given the opportunity to garden in front of someone else’s property.
Helps said the guidelines should not be restrictive but, instead, permissive and enabling.
“There is a push in Victoria and across North America to put public lands to their best and highest uses. When we have a whole generation of people who are wanting to do exactly that — to transform grass into food, the city should be working as hard as we can and making it easy. … It just can’t be this complicated,” Helps said.
She acknowledged that while the property owner would ultimately be responsible, the guidelines should encourage property owners to work with renters in their neighbourhoods to encourage boulevard gardens.
“What city hall should be doing is enabling citizens to take leadership and get things done in their community. We should be the heartbeat of the community.”
To exclude boulevards in the city’s taxed boulevard program is also too restrictive, said Helps, who believes gardens should be allowed on those sites at the property owners’ discretion.
“If a city person on his lawn mower comes up to mow a boulevard that is a garden, you just move on and do your work at the next boulevard,” she said.
