Observations from a year of fermentation with the
Radical Gardeners of the Purple Thistle Center
I'm sitting on the pavement in the center of a nondescript cul-de-sac. To the west, just over a chain link fence and past a sliver of trees, the train tracks form a channel that bisects East Vancouver's industrial lowlands; to the east, trucks surge endlessly down Clark Drive, the city's material mainline and the gateway to the Port of Vancouver. The words 'unused' and 'marginal' could easily be used to describe the land upon which I sit, but truth be told, this space is host to a variety of functions for the urban organism: a free parkade for shiftless cabbies, a discrete nook for sex-workers and injectors, a sometimes home for the homeless, a garbage dump. And now, of course, earth-healing, food sovereignty, and collective empowerment.
At first it may look like a mess. There’s movement, color, noise, and laughter. A hundred people are hanging out in this discarded and disregarded 'dead end', creating something new. Some are making music, either with banjos, guitars, turntables, or homemade elderberry branch horns. Some are stuffing their faces with free food and delectables, lovingly prepared in various houses around the community the night before. Some are working in a large field of buckwheat, rye, and fava beans that is growing all along the periphery. Still others are just sitting in circles and talking, or bobbing for apples, or taking pictures, or shooting film, or walking the labyrinth that’s been painted in the center of the cul-de-sac in radiating concentric circles. And, of course, there are a bunch of people building and painting a bunch of planter boxes to be scattered about the city to raise awareness about food sovereignty and stand as public art. A pretty ridiculous spectacle, really – what is going on here?
The Purple Thistle
I first came to the Purple Thistle Center a year and a half ago, coming off two years of intensive university education, having created five 16mm films and thus having spent much of my time quite literally in the dark. I was about to embark on a three-month bike trip down the west coast, really looking for ways to get my hands dirty and involve myself in transformative projects instead of merely documenting the desire to do so, as I found I had been over the previous year. I experienced much on that trip, but it was the Thistle that gave me the confidence to put school on hold and take full responsibility for my energy and actions, directing them primarily towards what I valued and wished to see grow in this world.
The Purple Thistle is, as far as I am concerned, an excellent model for education, one that does not eliminate the university but greatly narrows and refines its application and challenges its raison d'être. The Thistle has many layers: on the surface, it is a free, open, and non-hierarchical space in which to meet, create, share, teach, and learn. There are a multitude of free materials and resources for making art, a stocked darkroom, a recording studio, a screenprinting studio, a host of analog and digital film equipment, a computer lab, a sewing and textiles room, two libraries, an herbal apothecary, and bike tools. On a deeper level, the Thistle is a community centre and a community, animated by a permeable core collective of youth working horizontally through consensus and anti-oppression principles. This collective maintains and holds the space, decides where and how to allocate funds, represents the Thistle at community events, organizes and spearheads, or supports, various actions throughout Vancouver, hosts workshops, celebrations, and performances within or outside the space, and teaches classes or facilitates working groups - 'pods' that exist within the space or shoot off to become their own projects. At the deepest level, the Thistle is a platform and support system from which to pursue one's education in a radical, self-motivated fashion and actively be involved in and transform one's community in the same motion; a flexible structure through which resources, materials, facilities, collaborators, mentors, city officials, community organizers, university professors and other academics, professional artists, and opportunities can be accessed and mobilized towards a multitude of means and ends.
The Thistle's urban gardening project was initiated two years ago by a group of Thistlers who started building beds and planting food on marginal roadside land across the street from the centre. They were able to secure some modest funding, and their guerilla garden was retroactively approved as an official community garden by the City of Vancouver. I came into the project mid-way through the first year as many of the original gardeners moved on to other projects, and found that, because the group was essentially composed of a number of folks who'd never gardened before and was structured around skill-sharing, making mistakes, following intuition, reading, and seeking outside guidance when necessary, I was able to learn and take on responsibility with great speed and depth. Over a year later, we have come a long, long way and stand at somewhat of a crossroads, a place of great possibility and excitement. I am writing today to capture many of the fruits, lessons, and pitfalls of the past year in clear focus, to help illuminate the way forward, to share relevant experiences and observations, and inform those who've yet to try growing food collectively in an industrial wasteland as an anti-capitalist, anti-imperial political statement, a catalyst for decolonization, and, most importantly, a way of life.
Collective Gardens, Community Gardens
The traditional community garden model goes something like this: the earth is portioned out into roughly equivalent 'plots,' of which each member of the community may lay claim to one. The owner of each plot is responsible for all the decisions and work which take place within his or her miniature ecosystem and is entitled to all the fruits of this labor. Neighbors may or may not see each other, and fees are paid for the general maintenance and upkeep of the commons. Does this system sound familiar? What kinds of values are being perpetuated here?
This system has its benefits, and certainly there is more magic to community gardens and their function in our neighborhoods than this loose description suggests, but nevertheless this approach leaves us extraordinarily limited. The greatest gratification any individual may enjoy is the beauty, upkeep, and bounty of his or her own plot: that achieved, there is little further room. If one's neighbor's plot is neglected, one merely looks on with disdain but does not intervene; perhaps the plot ought be given to someone else – after all, there are never close to enough plots for everyone. Collaboration and commitment to collective well-being are optional and unnecessary, and it is no one's fault but one's own if one fails to make the best use of one's own plot. But, most importantly, there is no awareness of the broader landscape and what it calls for and needs,of the possibilities that a less segmented view of ecology offers to the grower of food and to the earth healer, and, of course, of the potential of collective effort.
The gardens at the Thistle have no such divisions. Physically, the first two gardens are mostly bound within various beds, boxes, and containers as the aesthetics of our industrial neighbors and the one-dimensional nature of the landscape call for, but our newest and most ambitious garden, an urban food forest patterned on the teachings of permaculture, is designed around the contours of the land and is not sectioned. It is social division, however, that concerns me the most here. From the beginning, we have operated within the same framework as the Thistle collective: a broad community of drop-in participants with little to no responsibility; a core collective that maintains consistency of vision, action, and commitment; and one to two coordinators that anchor the collective, deal with finances, organize work parties, provide food, arrange workshops, mentor, liaison with city people and other community actors, and hold space so that collective members can push different aspects of the project forward. Since Thistle participants are primarily low- to no-income youth, grants support the coordinators and the funds to purchase seeds, needed materials, and food, but as a model this system could just as easily be replicated by communities who choose to pay a coordinator or two instead of paying plot fees – the expense might be greater, but given the right context and people, the benefits could far outweigh the costs. The core collective and outer ring of participants may take on as much or as little responsibility and initiative as they choose, and the project grows and shrinks to match the energy of those involved, which varies seasonally and individually, always able to fall back on the core and the coordinators. At any given time, there is always enough work to do, enough food to feed, and enough shared learning to be had in the gardens to satisfy the number and range of participants; and when large projects need to be tackled, there is a broad community to call on. I think this system is especially effective for high-density urban neighborhoods, where it allows a busy, diverse population to collectively secure a bountiful and diverse harvest, even if no individual member has the time, knowledge, or desire to maintain their own plot year upon year. For the Thistle, it allows for participants – many of whom are young unschoolers, dropouts, and schoolers, all of whom are learning to follow their hearts and their intuitions - to come and go as they please, give and take as they please, start projects and then leave, finish projects that were started by someone else, and pollinate far and wide. And, of course, never pay plot fees and never be tied down.
Granted, this system has its drawbacks, especially since it isn't cushioned by a wider societal framework and stands out as a radical model of what could be if we continue to teach ourselves to work horizontally and collectively. The very flexibility of the model is also sometimes its downfall – capitalism's self-fulfilling prophecy is that oftentimes people who are not able to directly monitor their individual stake in a project never bother to pitch it. And projects do get abandoned, and sometimes core members end up having to shoulder too much responsibility when the wider collective's reach overextends its grasp – in the end, it often comes down to two overworked coordinators. This, too, is problematic for horizontal efforts: the workload and embodied knowledge of the system does by no means have to be equivalently allocated, but too great a concentration can be a collective's downfall, where a few feel overwhelmed, resentful, and self-aggrandizing all at once for all they've taken on, while the rest are equally confused by how to pitch in, how to take ownership, and how to share vision in such an imbalanced endeavor. Our collective has never reached this point, but the concern is relevant and the key, as always, is balance. This dynamic can be complicated when money enters the picture, especially in situations where drastically different levels of privilege, knowledge, and commitment are present. I worked in the garden intensively for several months, from no previous experience, and began to take on responsibility and knowledge organically, and eventually it became appropriate for me to be paid to do what I was doing, which was, essentially, coordinating (something that others recognized before I did). How this payment serves to over-commit me or under-commit others is unclear to me, but it does change my and others' perspective on what my role is in our collective, for better and for worse. Looking back, I would say that up to this point our structure has been appropriate to collective goals and needs and to the goals and needs of the individuals in our collective. As this changes, so too will the way we organize – this is the beauty of horizontality. And, in the end, the money is very little, but it serves to allow the coordinators enough stability to consistently maintain a steady and high level of commitment, enthusiasm, knowledge, and to push the project forward. This is gardening, after all, and the greatest benefits are not at all monetary.
Abundance, Scarcity, and Radical Generosity
If you take a walk through the neighboring Cottonwood Gardens – a beautiful 20-year old combination permaculture food forest and community garden – you cannot help but notice the preponderance of signs declaring that the vegetables and fruits in the garden are the property of the gardeners and are not, under any circumstances, to be taken. One is likely to be accosted even for harvesting the buds of the cottonwood trees, of which there are thousands on each tree, and perhaps by police, who have, in light of complaints about vegetable theft, been invited to include Cottonwood Gardens on their rounds. Given the sheer bounty of this incredible urban oasis, the signs seem ridiculous, but they are quite serious, and well enforced. This is the scarcity model at work.
When I tell people that the food and medicine grown in the Thistle gardens is free for any to partake of, they are often concerned that such openness would leave us with nothing for our labors; yet, in the past two years there have been only a couple insignificant instances of what I would consider to be irresponsible over-harvesting on the part of passers by – it is, after all, a shame to find that all of the beautiful red poppy seed heads have been harvested without word. However, in almost this entire period, there has always been enough food to satisfy any gardener, and then some to offer to guests, friends, and strangers. Most people who work in the gardens in any capacity are extraordinarily modest in what they take in return, and those who receive freely display equal modesty. It brings great delight to any of us to see little old Asian ladies harvest a salad of chard, kale, nasturtium, and calendula on their way home, never looking over their shoulders once. And while we do not have equivalent signage that encourages people to take freely of our gardens – this, perhaps, would be an overzealous display of abundance in the face of scarcity – the invitation is quite clear to those who understand the language of radical generosity.
Radical generosity, as distinguished from skewed models of scarcity and abundance, suggests the same approach as the wild: there will always be enough to go around as long as one remains aware of, and attends to, the health of the entire system. If someone takes from my garden, I will assume that they have much greater need than I and that I benefit from their satisfying that need at my 'expense.' My wont is to share as much as I may while still attending to the overall health of my system, be it my body or the ecology I am helping to steward. Much as the wild offers forth her food and medicine, promising to continue in good faith so long as we tread lightly and look after her, recognizing her own advantage in sharing with and sustaining her children, so too do I see my own advantage in giving freely what I have to give, helping to sustain and inspire my fellow beings and trusting that I too will be looked after. This is radical generosity, which in many cultures is embedded in the idea of hospitality and is a central tenet of the social contract. This practice has, almost without exception, been a great benefit to all involved and continues to be a beautiful balance that only rats and the occasional confused human seem unable to understand.
This Food Forest on Unceded Coast Salish Territory
In many ways, agriculture, as practiced on large and small scales, is and has been a very colonial practice. Large portions of land are cleared for the introduction of often foreign or downright invasive crops that suit the appetite of a people not accustomed to living off the fruits of the land. In the case of large-scale agriculture, these effects are obvious in monocropping and the petro-chemical, slave, or wage-slave system needed to support it. But even as gardeners, we essentially keep plots of land in early succession to grow needy foreign annuals like cabbages, tomatoes, potatoes, and carrots; and, to add insult to injury, citing our ability to avoid integrating on a significant level into indigenous food systems (often because we have destroyed the capacity of these systems to support us) as a triumph for food security. And, with our food systems in such a state as they are, there is a lot of validity and hope to this claim, but we have to set our sights further than our allotments. If we are to truly right our relations to the land, those of us who are still walking as poor guests upon it must right our relations with those of us who are utterly overwhelmed hosts.
Most native peoples of Turtle Island practiced very subtle forms of agriculture, often combining them with controlled burnings that facilitated the constant process of renewal that characterizes our fire ecologies. Often only a few choice, native crops that thrived on disturbance were grown; the foundations of their traditional diets were based on hunting and foraging, finely tuned to the balance of the seasons and population densities. Here, the staples of the Coast Salish were salmon, shellfish, seaweed, berries, animal fats, barks, and wild greens. Because of large-scale resource extraction, clear-cutting, and other shortsighted incursions into the wild, this way of life is no longer possible in many places. To steal wealth is one thing; to destroy the source of a people's wealth through sheer ignorance, and often through intent, is another entirely, a sure-fire way to manufacture dependency. This practice continues daily and is one of the most vicious, thoughtless, and destructive forces on our planet, at present running rampant especially through Canada, which is constructed as an ideal site for runaway resource extraction.
How, as gardeners and earth-healers, do we counter and remedy forces like this? This is a question we confront daily at the Thistle and is a direct challenge for the garden project, an an especially important question in British Columbia, since there were never any treaties signed and the land that our city rests upon remains essentially unceded, “borrowed” indefinitely and without consent. We are by no means even close to satisfying this question, but I will attempt to put forward some of my observations.
The purple thistle flower is an invasive European weed. It is often the first plant to colonize a disturbed patch of land, and is usually considered a nuisance. However, as with all noxious weeds, anyone versed in the patterns of ecosystem succession and keen on wild foods can sing the praises of the purple thistle. Contrary to commercial tree-planting practice, where a section of forest is clear-cut and then replanted with a homogenous crop of climax species such as pines and cedars, true ecological succession works slowly through a diverse host of players. When a piece of land experiences fire, flood, landslide, paving, or any other form of disturbance, the first plants to pop up and make their homes in the now barren soil are often foreign weeds. These plants are often best suited to the task of preventing erosion, drawing nutrition from deeper in the soil-strata, creating food and habitat for insects and other animals, and creating shade, moisture, and nutrition for the next generation of seeds to sprout; interestingly, they are often also powerful medicines, such as plantain, chickweed, st. john's wort, or coltsfoot. These are nature's first responders, and they do their job well. It is only after these plants have successfully prepared the soil that many second-wave successional native species can take root. From here, native edge species such as salmonberry, hardhack, and red elder can proliferate, allowing pioneer trees such as birch, alder, and cottonwood to take root, eventually making way for climax species like pine, spruce, and cedar. We often don't allow this process to progress, as, out of some cultural disdain for invasive weeds, westerners are often compelled to pick up their petroleum-powered weed-whackers. But if the successional process is left alone or helped along, we will once again have a healthy, balanced forest.
I see the Thistle project in general, and the garden project, as extensions of this idea: sprouting up in the center of devastation (in this case, the industrial in-fill of East Vancouver), we're a weedy pioneer, slowly rebuilding fertility and holding space so that other seeds may sprout, be they new organizations, collectives, gardens, or simply empowered individuals. And while we embrace the idea decolonization is a process that we all must see through – we are all indigenous to somewhere, and most of us have been displaced in one way, shape, or form – and that decolonization projects do not need to be spearheaded by the local indigenous to gain legitimacy, those of us who do this kind of work and who hail from other lands have to acknowledge that we have somewhat shallow roots. In light of this, though we have a highly diverse range of participants, it is getting to be time for us to actively seek out and open some serious space for non-token indigenous leadership. We've done much of the initial intense soil preparation, and now it's time to seek further guidance, involvement, and energy – I am feeling that much of our next year will involve this sort of outreach, acknowledging that the people who show up are the right people. And, outside of the garden, we must continue to involve ourselves in efforts to fend off further resource extraction in our communities and turn the tide towards a culture of indigenous sovereignty and respect for our landbase, helping to heal its ability to support us. In the garden, we are moving towards gardening to not only jumpstart fertility and the successional process, but also to create perennial systems of integrated native and non-native food-bearing and medicinal species in a 'food forest' that is designed as a center for learning and community food security and which will also serve as habitat and eventually reach a stage of late succession, unlike most gardens. This is the vision – the first manifestation of which we were celebrating at the 'dead end' – that is driving our approach to decolonization at present, aware though we are that this is only a first step.
People
I think, to conclude an oddly formal writing on personal observations, I would like to paint a picture, from memory, of some of the folks who have built this garden and grown food and community this year (with great apologies and love to those who will inevitably slip my mind). Marla, who anchors this vessel and fills it with love and good cooking; John, who always manages to make time between his acting and guitar playing to come out to the garden; Maya, who spreads the seeds out for all the little hands to grasp; Phanh, who works the garden like there's no tomorrow, and then some; Sam and Kevin, dreamers and catalysts; Hannah and Peter, keepers of the fuzzy pollinators and the sweet ambrosia; Lilah, great pumpkin grower and hunter; Carla and Chris, who relish the opportunity to be told what to do; Eirlys, who loves to geek out; Alex, dear friend from Hamilton; Daniel, bespectacled and twinkle-eyed; Andrew, sunburnt world traveler; Ander, the farmhouse animal; Jen, lingerie produce bag seamstress; Ethan and Arielle, the elves; Chance, Issac, and Aly, clownfolk; Yifan, goose-chaser; Dylan, terra artist; Kurtis, who licked the digitalis; Oliver, mentor and lover of emulsions; Daniel, northern scout; Charlotte, island yogi; Maxim, sign-maker; Adrian, who walks the labyrinth; Jodi, who bestows unexpected gifts; Cease, fierce healer and plant talker; the CJSF Radio Camp kids; the Linnea girls; the PT Institute folks, and so many more. Beautiful, incredible individuals, united in collective action and empowered earth-healers all, it is good work that we do.
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