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Charlottetown ready to expand community gardens

The City of Charlottetown welcomes the idea of community gardens being set up in small neighbourhood parks, so people who need food can grow it.

Gardens could improve food security for people in the city

The City of Charlottetown has started growing food plants in containers in Victoria Park. (City of Charlottetown)

The City of Charlottetown welcomes the idea of community gardens being set up in small neighbourhood parks.

The idea was brought up recently by a city woman struggling to feed herself and her teenaged son, and who could not get a space to grow vegetables in existing gardens.

City parks manager Sue Fraser said anyone interested in seeing current park space designated for gardens should make a request to her department.

"It's no different really than some of our outdoor rinks that we do in parks in the wintertime. We'll go in and help create the infrastructure and then the neighbourhood would work together to maintain it," said Fraser.

"So along that same kind of principle, we would encourage people if they wanted to do some sort of container planting in a park, an open space, that they would then in turn manage it."

Fraser said this would be a great next step in the city's edible landscape initiative. Raised beds are already growing food in Victoria Park.

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