Alex Wilson Community Garden
Black Creek Community Farm
Location: Jane and Finch
Claim to Fame: 8 acre urban farm working for food justice by growing organic produce and making natural spaces accessible for low income, racialized residents in a densely populated neighborhood. Working with Sweet Grass Roots Collective to bring Indigenous gardens and ceremony to the site. Lots of video tours and workshops on social media!
Bowery Project
Location: Downtown
Claim to Fame: Mobile urban farms for temporary food production in vacant lots in downtown Toronto.
Website: Link
Building Roots: Ashbridge Estate
Location: Greenwood/Coxwell
Claim to Fame: Building Roots’ new Ashbridge Estate farm is returning the property to its roots as a farm. All the food is sold on a pay what you can basis in the Moss Park Market, a sustainable source of organic and local food for low income communities operated out of a shipping container!
Website: Link
CICS Enrich Project
Flemingdon Park Community Ministry – The Common Table
Indigenous Land Stewardship Circle
Location: High Park
ILSC Description of Their Group: We are a Circle of Elders, knowledge keepers, community members and leaders who have come together around our shared commitment to healing Indigenous lands and community here in Tkaronto. High Park’s oak savannahs are Dish With One Spoon Wampum lands, where our ancestors conducted ceremony, grew gardens, hunted and foraged for food and medicines.
Website: Link
John Polyani Garden and PACT
Location: Lawrence Heights
Claim to Fame: This 1.5 acre garden is one of three partnerships between the PACT Urban Peace Program Grow to Learn and the Toronto District School Board. While students are learning about organic food production, nutrition and sustainability, they are growing food for distribution in the community. A novel community compost exchange allows residents to turn in food scraps in exchange for market coupons.
Website: Link
Milky Way Garden
Location: Parkdale
Claim to Fame: Located on the Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust’s first parcel of land, the Milky Way Garden is a community garden used by largely Tibetan community members participating in the Parkdale Public Library ESL program. A fire pit for sacred fires and Indigenous food and medicine plants make the garden a place for Indigenous teaching, ceremony and celebrations. The garden has big plans to become an urban agriculture hub and social enterprise, connecting the community through healthy food, skills development, and learning opportunities.
Website: Greenest City, PNLT
Parkview Neighborhood Garden
Location: North York
Claim to Fame: Returning the area back to its use in the 18th and early 19th century as a farm, the Parkview Neighborhood Garden is an organic market garden. The garden is organized so that there are no individual plots, instead, decisions are made collectively. Food produced is sold to the community from a cart in the garden, with profits split between charity donations and buying seeds and other supplies.
Website: Link
Scarborough Village Community Garden
Sundance Harvest
Location: Downsview
Claim to Fame: 1/3 acre, year-round and ecological urban farm that’s rooted in justice. Growing in the Margins is a free urban agriculture mentorship program which nurtures and grows the farm projects of BIPOC, LGBTQ2S and youth with disabilities from seed to harvest.
Inspiring instructional videos and social media posts with founder Cheyenne Sundance.
The Gardens Lakeshore
Location: South Etobicoke
Claim to Fame: Garden pods are like a community garden except more mobile, comprised of raised beds that make them easy to set up throughout communities. Produce grown in the gardens is partially given back to the community through food banks and food programs like the LAMP CHC Good Food Market.
Website: Link
Withrow Park Farmers’ Market – Urban Grower Project
Location: Riverdale
Claim to Fame: This is the first farmers’ market in Toronto to create a program specifically for urban growers and backyard gardeners to attend as vendors. It aims to foster and encourage more urban agriculture in the city and by mindfully reducing barriers that small scale producers might face.
Website: Link
Toronto Urban Agriculture Week 