Get your hands dirty in the community garden.

Run by the Student Nutrition Access Program (SNAP) of the Student Association (SA), the volunteer lead garden is returning to the Casa Loma green space, to provide nutritious and homegrown veggies and herbs.

This year, the garden opened May. 6, and will run until September 2024.

“The community garden is something that we do right outside the Casa Loma campus. We have a garden just right outside it’s beside the Tim Hortons,” said Pranav Padhiyar, SNAP lead. “It’s a practice where students can just come up, and it’s a good community building exercise where you can learn an essential skill, which is gardening. And also, along with that you can bond with your peers, doing the same, so it’s a good exercise.”

He notes that students who take part and volunteer for this year’s garden can learn everything from planting, right through to the harvest.

“[Students will learn] how gardening is carried out… to harvesting them (the vegetables) and providing the supplies back to us and back to the students at the end.”

The community garden is located behind Pizza Nova (near the corner of Dartnell Avenue and Davenport Road). The garden is part of a bigger initiative where SNAP partnered with the Spadina Museum. Last year, the partnership resulted in events like apple picking, where the SA service was able to take upwards of 20 student volunteers for the experience.

The garden space may be small, however, last year the group took on growing things like zucchini, kale, peppers, cilantro, thyme, and more.

The volunteer group got together already to start brainstorming what they might like to grow. Their wish list includes things like sweet potatoes, cassava, eggplant, blueberries, okra, and even watermelon.

Padhiyar says that in addition to leaning an important skill like gardening, everything harvested gets given back to students.

“Everything that we do harvest through the community garden is given back to the students through SNAP. So, whatever fresh produce that the students grow. Yeah, that comes. So we give it back to them too like the actually the volunteers who do all the hard work. And yeah, whatever is the rest it comes back to snap, and then we again, give it back to students [through the food pantry program].”

For more information on volunteering and supporting the community at the garden, visit https://www.studentassociation.ca/community-garden/.