Photo of Queen’s Park by Flickr user Maia C

On Friday, City of Toronto workers removed, without notice, a public garden at Queen’s Park planted by a group called Occupy Gardens. The garden had been planted as a part of the Occupy Movement, and in an article by the Globe and Mail, the newspaper said, “Toronto parks director Richard Ubbens said the garden was removed because it was planted illegally.” In the same article, Ubbens went on to say that the city did not provide notice of its intent to remove the garden because there was no sign with the group’s contact information. However, the leader of the group responsible for the garden, Jacob Moreland, claims that his group of guerrilla gardeners had left a clear sign with their contact info, causing some to characterize the city’s actions as malicious.  

Whatever the truth behind the removal, because the city failed to or chose not contact the group, Occupy Gardens could not harvest the variety of fruits and vegetables growing in the garden – instead, the city ripped the plants out, put them in garbage cans, and trucked them off to a dump site before putting sod over where the garden used to be. Moreland estimates that almost 500 people had benefited from the Garden, many of whom did not have access to fresh produce.     

In fact, part of the group’s original motive for planting the garden was to draw attention to the lack of access to fresh produce some in the city are experiencing. In an interview for Globe and Mail, Moreland said, “The garden was planted as an act of civil disobedience in the name of food security.” He went on to say, “We’re experiencing a global food crisis and here in this city … increasingly more and more people are depending on food banks.” 

In response to the removal, Occupy Gardens held a rally at City Hall today to protest the removal. [Rabble via the Globe and Mail]

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Igor Bonifacic is a simple intern working for the Toronto Standard. You can follow him on twitter at @igorbonifacic.