gardens agriculture transition assimilation neighbourhoods
urbanism portable knowledge by christine leu
front yard production
A few years ago I bought a house in the west end of downtown Toronto. My roommate and I moved in during the winter. In early spring, when it was barely above freezing, we saw an elderly Chinese couple toiling away in their front yard every morning. We marvelled at their hard work but could never have imagined the remarkable fruits of their labour. The neighbourhood is composed mostly of detached and semi-detached houses from the early 1900s, with front porches overlooking front yards and sidewalks with private backyards and back lanes. It is home to many Portuguese families, some living in the neighbourhood for multiple generations. I am part of a recent gentrification wave. We are singles and young families who have been drawn to the cheaper land and rent, and the active nightlife and art scenes. In between these two demographics sit a few first- and second-generation Chinese families. The elderly Chinese couple are the Tongs. They are tiny, no more than five feet tall, with grey hair under their traditional bamboo hats. They are also industrious – they work long hours a day in the blistering cold of early spring, the extreme heat and humidity of summer and the first frosts of fall. The Tong family emigrated from China in the late 1990s. The extended family, six children and dozens of grandchildren, all live within a few blocks radius. The elder Tongs speak an obscure dialect of Cantonese and no English. Our communication is restricted to big smiles and eager waves hello. They were farmers in China, and after they immigrated to Canada they had nothing to do, so the family suggested that the grandparents farm as they did in China. Unlike the pristine lawns and perfectly trimmed flowers of my Portuguese neighbours, my Chinese neighbours converted their entire lawn into a small urban farm. The Tongs’ front yard is about 10’ x 10’. There are mismatched wooden boards for walkways, salvaged white, orange, green, and blue polyethylene mesh bags to protect the vegetation, miscellaneous building materials to prop up taller plants and vines, large plastic buckets for cleaning, sorting, and watering and dozens of red and green planter buckets on the walkway. There are three urban farm sites on our short street. The Tongs live in a house at the middle of the street. There is a small side plot at the family-run convenience store, and last year, the corner lot across from me was sold and the rear lot was quickly converted into a farm even before the interior renovation. We gradually realised that the elderly Tongs were farming all of these lots. Relatives had purchased the property across from mine, and the Chinese convenience store family let the couple farm it. It was confusing to piece together who did what and who lived where as there was plenty of criss-crossing on the street, people coming in and out of each other’s houses and conversations held on the sidewalk.
On Site review 24
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