Toronto
Nisha's Sorauren garden.

When Nisha, Dan and their young son Joshua moved into a Toronto west-end warehouse, there wasn’t much going on in the way of green space. Surrounded mostly by the concrete of a parking lot, there was a narrow strip of land, right at the back of the property, running alongside the train tracks.

There was a garden of sorts there—another tenant had gotten the city to clean up the large pile of trash and construction waste that had accumulated there over the years, and to deliver a large load of topsoil. Making homemade fertilizer out of fish heads rotted in barrels of water, she soaked the topsoil in this solution and had a thriving crop of mostly wild grasses and milkweed.

But when Nisha laid eyes on the area, she knew she could turn it into something special. Slowly, she started enlarging and adding flowerbeds, filling them with a wide mix of perennials and annuals that she purchased herself, or were donated by enthusiastic tenants. Money was donated for sod, the existing fire pit was repaired, a variety of scavenged lawn furniture and barbecues surfaced, and suddenly there was a gathering place for all the tenants to enjoy.

Culling materials from the garbage, they erected a fence all around the garden, to keep out the marauding neighbourhood dogs. As the years went by, a spring clean-up became an annual ritual, and money was collected for the purchasing of further plants.

Maintaining the garden was a constant battle—as it was in a public space, Nisha had little control over what when on there. Sometimes she would come out to discover all her hours of hard work trampled into the ground by thoughtless tenants and their friends. The fences were only good for keeping out the dogs!

Because of these challenges, the garden was in a state of constant change and adaptation. When the grass became worn in the high traffic areas, Nisha installed flat stones that she brought back by canoe from the banks of the Humber River.

And now that Nisha and her family have moved on, the garden is changing again. Deprived of its primary caregiver, it is reverting to a wilder state, the once carefully tended beds seeded by wildflowers that grow alongside the train tracks.

But the lilies, climbing roses and clematis still flower amid the weeds and broken fences. An oasis of bloom in a concrete wasteland, this place remains a testament to the ingenuity and perseverance of gardeners everywhere.