Reflections on the North Central Community Gardens Branch Out Project

Abstract

The North Central Community Gardens, an urban agriculture initiative of the North Central Community Association in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, introduced the Branch Out Project in the summer of 2020. The project’s purpose was to expand the North Central Community Gardens, which already consisted of three locations, onto additional schoolyard and backyard land. Despite—or perhaps because of—the COVID-19 pandemic, the first season of the project resulted in the construction of eight new gardens and has positively impacted food access, community engagement, and knowledge development and exchange. The goals of this commentary are two-fold: (1) to provide insight into the process of community garden expansion, with the hopes of benefiting other practitioners; and (2) to contribute to an understanding of the possibilities, challenges, and impacts of community gardens in general, and community garden expansion in particular, as a counter-neoliberal food sovereignty practice.