GROWing with Seniors

Led by immigrant and refugee seniors and with the help of youth volunteers, this project helped create a safe, inclusive, and publicly accessible community garden where immigrant seniors were empowered to share their valuable farming skills and socialize with peers and youth. Knowledge-sharing was a key aspect of this project and was promoted during the development and care for the community garden and in comprehensive workshops on gardening, farming, and the environment.

Project Information

‍What was the GROWing with Seniors Project?

The GROWing with Seniors Project was a community garden project that built on a past program offered by The Immigrant Education Society (TIES) called the Gardens by Refugees and Other Newcomers Welcomed (GROW) project. This program invited elderly citizens to connect with gardening, growing food and their local community through learning and socialization. The program activities were provided at no cost to the participants, thanks to funding from Service Canada’s New Horizons for Seniors Program. Several workshops, promotional booths, and a Harvest Festival were hosted in collaboration with the Calgary Horticultural Society and the Kerby Centre.

What were the aims of GROWing with Seniors?

GROWing with Seniors aimed to:  

• Provide refugee and immigrant seniors an inclusive space to meet with other seniors, community members, and youth volunteers to combat occurrences of social isolation.
• Provide refugee and immigrant seniors a space for new learning and knowledge sharing through workshops encompassing a broad range of topics such as environmental sustainability, food security, indoor planting, and Indigenous medicinal gardening. 
• Empower refugee and immigrant seniors through knowledge exchange with people of different ages and cultural backgrounds. 

Why is this important?

This project addresses the unequal distribution of green spaces in Calgary. Access to green spaces is not equally distributed in the city (González, 2020) and there are limited numbers of community gardens in urban areas with higher percentages of immigrants, racialized individuals and Indigenous people (Lowan-Trudeau et al., 2020). Thus, there are missed opportunities for immigrants and refugees to engage in farming and gardening along with its advantages such as fresh produce and a more connected settlement experience. Community gardens do more than transforming underutilized spaces to grow food as a collective. It helps in terms of equity around public spaces and contributes to building a cohesive community. Our experience with the GROW project revealed the depth of knowledge that racialized newcomers with backgrounds in traditional farming in their home countries bring regarding soil regeneration, plant growth, and human-animal relationships. We also found that,  consistent with the literature (Draper & Freedman, 2010), a publicly accessible green space helped with the integration of newcomers, influencing their mental and physical well-being from being outdoors as well as from the comfort and familiarity participants felt when working on the garden. 

However, established community gardens may not be as accessible, inclusive and welcoming to newcomer seniors because of differences and norms with respect to farming and gardening, as well as physical accessibility and language barriers. Immigrant focused elderly-accessible gardens can create opportunities for newcomer seniors to contribute their time and expertise to grow nutritious food, socialize with other people, and pass on cross-generational and cross-cultural knowledge to each other as well as younger community members, increasing their social participation. 

Newcomer seniors are specifically vulnerable to a broad range of social, physical and psychological issues. Racism, discrimination, language barriers, mobility issues, health concerns, isolation from weak social networks and separation from family and friends are all risk factors that are uniquely compounded into the newcomer senior experience. Studies have shown that up to 20% of individuals over 65 are socially isolated because of decreasing social networks (Victor et al., 2000), making seniors particularly vulnerable to the effects of isolation. All of these issues were magnified in the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. GROWing with Seniors will help combat the social isolation experienced by many refugee and immigrant seniors during the pandemic by providing participants a safe space to socialize while learning and sharing valuable skills related to urban farming. COVID-19 still imposes threats to the health of seniors so the community garden’s outdoor location provides a safe space for seniors to interact with others while not putting their health at risk. 

Project Activities

At the onset of the project, we worked with immigrant seniors, led by a seniors committee, and youth volunteers to create, improve, and maintain a publicly accessible community garden at the TIES Whitehorn location. The focus of this garden was to create a safe and inclusive space for senior newcomers in Calgary to obtain the benefits of gardening and knowledge sharing. 

Then, the hard work of participants was celebrated and shared at the end-of-summer Harvest Festival, where participants made a multicultural meal using fresh ingredients from the garden. 

Finally, participants were once again able to share and learn about different traditional farming methods from around the world during workshops. 

• The program offered workshops twice a week, with topics on environmental sustainability, food security, nutrition, indoor planting, plant care, and Indigenous gardening practices. 
• Garden committee members also had the opportunity to lead and facilitate discussions in the workshops.

Lessons Learned

Through hands-on opportunities for learning, seniors experienced an increase in sense of belonging, learned new skills, and developed friendships through this project.

We also observed that seniors were eager to learn in a group setting with hands-on activities, need programming that meets them where they are, in their own community hubs (not very interested in travelling to new destinations that are out of their typical routine), and desire to connect with their peers and knowledgeable community members.

References

Draper, C., & Freedman, D. (2010). Review and analysis of the benefits, purposes, and motivations associated with community gardening in the United States. Journal of Community Practice, 18(4), 458-492.

Gonzalez, X. (2020, December 5). What community gardens tell us about inequity. Sprawl Magazine. https://www.sprawlcalgary.com/community-gardens-calgary-northeast

Lowan-Trudeau, M., Keough, N., Wong, J., & Haidey, S. (2020). The Affordable Housing, Transportation, and Food Nexus: Community Gardens and Healthy Affordable Living in Calgary. The Canadian Geographer, 64(3), 502–515. https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12606 

Victor, C., Scambler, S., Bond, J., & Bowling, A. (2000). Being Alone in Later Life: Loneliness, Social Isolation and Living Alone. Reviews in Clinical Gerontology, 10(4), 407-417. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959259800104101‍‍