An Idea Is Born
Just a couple of generations ago, the skills required to cultivate a garden were quite commonplace. People with space for a garden could, almost instinctively, plant flowers, raise crops and prune their own fruit trees. Today, for many, just figuring out how to open the safety-catch on secateurs is a challenge and as for knowing which way to hold the pruners and which bits to cut off the tree ....??! City and sub-urban dwellers now vastly exceed in number the people who live on or from the land and the skills exchange between town and country has almost ceased to exist.Especially in the urban setting, knowledge of gardening as a craft has become so diluted by time and so distorted by marketing, that people literally don’t know the difference between a spade and a shovel, far less do they know which tool is to be used for what purpose.For people who contemplate a career in horticulture, local colleges and universities offer excellent introductions to the scientific and business aspects of the industry. For the home gardener though, these courses are usually too costly, require too much time, and delve into matters which are not necessarily backyard relevant. At the other extreme, garden clubs and their kin are inclined to spend most of their time and resources on organization, fund-raising, and socially-oriented events. While some percentage of the membership might be involved in group projects involving actual hands-on gardening, the education component of the organization is likely little more than a flower arranging demonstration or sitting in the dark while someone projects innumerable pretty pictures on the wall. If more formal education is offered it is will typically be at a very basic level introducing little which could not be picked up by talking to a next door neighbour.
The Concept
Peel Teaching Garden was conceived to occupy the widening void between agribusiness and backyard practical. To be of interest to people of all origins and levels of gardening experience, the program needed to introduce, in a non-intimidating way, both the most basic of garden techniques - how to wind up a gardener’s line or how to load a wheelbarrow - to just what does ‘pH’ stand for and why is pure water 7. To be accessible, there needed to be little or no financial commitment on the part of students. In the background, ‘Organization’ needed to be out of sight and the whole process needed to generate the very minimum of administration and paperwork.What was offered was a series of ‘free’ classroom seminars which explored the Whys and Hows of gardening. An agreement was reached with the Region of Peel Agricultural Society wherein the society donated classroom space at no charge. In return, each seminar attendee committed to contribute an equivalent number of hours of actual garden work maintaining the flower beds at the Brampton fairgrounds. It was an elegant plan; nobody needed to spent any money and all the participants could take away more than they came with.