Project Leads: Rachelle Niemela, Mary Morrier, Elyse Greenslade
Contact Info:
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: 705-822-1276
Location:
Twin Forks Community Park
1475 Gary Ave, Sudbury
Our garden is dedicated to the late Fabio Belli, Councillor 2010-2014, who was a driving force behind the establishment of our garden.
Type of garden:
Benevolent garden
All produce is shared with the community and with organizations like the Food Bank.
Residents in need are encouraged to visit our garden to get fresh produce for their families.
- Fabio Belli memorial plaque
- Seven 4x8 ft raised beds
- Four 4x4 ft raised beds
- Three 4Â ft round concrete raised beds
- One ground 4x4 bed
- One wheelchair accessible bed
- Large area with ground beds
- Front entrance arbour with grapes
- Four pea teepees
- Access points and hoses to municipal water
- Community art feature including a garden sign
- Creator Turtle Garden art feature
- Monarch butterfly waystation (milkweed patch)
- Large Food Forest with fruit trees including apple, plum, and butternut trees; fruit bushes including gooseberry, current, and haskap; and ground crops like strawberry and herbs.
- Rain barrels for storing water
- 3 wooden compost bins
- Utility shed
- Picnic table
- Waste facilities
- Large ground beds
- 3 sisters garden
- Pollinator garden with native wildflowers and milkweed patch
- Sunflower patch
- Access point and hoses to municipal water
- Art butterfly seat
- Fenced 16x20 greenhouse with 10x10 storage shed
- Accessible crusher dust pathways
- Gardening tools including a wheelbarrow, shovels and rakes, small garden tools, watering hoses
- Municipal water
- Public washrooms
- Picnic tables
- Playground facilities
- Splashpad
- Tennis/pickle ball and basketball courts
- Baseball diamond
- Soccer fields
- Access to kitchen at playground building for garden events
Better Beginnings Better Futures - Indigenous Programming
Bob's Service Center
Bruce Tait Construction Ltd
Canada Post
Church of the Ascension
City of Greater Sudbury
Coalition for a Liveable Sudbury - Project Impact
Collège Boréal
Conseil Scolaire du Grand Nord
Cyril Varney Public School
École publique Jean-Éthier-Blais
École séparée Saint-Dominique
The Elevate Project
Ellero Marble & Granite Mfg. Ltd.
Fruit for All
Government of Canada - Enabling Accessibility Fund
Holy Trinity Catholic Elementary School
Home Depot
Johanna Westby, Artist
Linda Hachez, Master Gardener
Lockerby Composite School
Lopes Ltd
New Sudbury Best Start Hub
Rainbow Concrete
Sudbury Community Garden Network
Sudbury Horticultural Society
Sudbury Secondary School
Sudbury Shared Harvest
TD Friends of the Environment
Twin Forks Neighbourhood Association
Union Gas Limited
Vale
Will Morin, Designer Creator Turtle Garden
In fall 2014, three 4-foot circular culverts were donated by Rainbow Concrete and two beds funded by the Ward 8 Community Action Network were built with lumber that was provided at a discount from Home Depot.
In 2015, we received a grant from TD Friends of the Environment and built an additional 4 beds. The Ward 8 Community Action Network, Church of the Ascension and other community volunteers helped to build the beds. We filled them with logs, and then layered triple-mix soil, Meeker's Mix (fish fertilizer donated by Vale), and vermiculite on top. This technique is called Hugelkultur and allows for aeration and the slow breakdown of nutrients contained in the logs. Our thanks to Bob's Service Center for helping to pick up supplies and soil, and to Linda Hachez for her expertise.
We partnered with the New Sudbury Best Start Hub to start seeds and plant the seedlings. Community volunteers helped over the summer to water and weed at the garden. Produce was provided free of charge to needy families in the area and to organizations like the Blue Door Soup Kitchen.
We received a Project Impact grant from the Coalition for a Liveable Sudbury to build a Creator Turtle Garden. Aboriginal teacher and artist Will Morin designed the bed and began its construction in the fall. The bed was completed in 2016.
We received free fruit trees from the Fruit for All community project. These trees were planted in the summer and should produce fruit within the next few years.
In late fall, we received three 4x4 ft raised beds from a Community Garden Network project that salvaged existing beds from the demolition of Long Lake Public School. The beds were delivered thanks to Bob's Service Center.
In 2016. we completed the Creator Turtle Garden and planted 300 Canada 150 tulips in the garden. We involved 280 students from Ecole St-Dominque and and 160 students from Cyril Varney Public School who planted seeds, nurtured them, and then planted the plants in the garden in June. We also worked with 10 families at the New Sudbury Best Start Hub to do the same.
In partnership with Union Gas Limited and the Community Garden Network, we installed three composters. We built a small pilot tree guild in partnership with the Community Garden Network and Fruit for All. In partnership with Lo-Ellen high school students, we retrofitted the beds donated by Long Lake Public School and these wicking gardens have reduced the amount of watering that is required in these beds.
In partnership with Fruit for All, we held tree pruning and tree guild workshops.
We planted milkweed donated by South End Greenhouse Growers, and created a sunflower ground bed.
We expanded the milkweed bed, planted additional fruit trees in partnership with the Sudbury Horticultural Society, added small 4x4 foot ground bed for the small children at the Best Start Hub, and added ground beds in a new back section of the garden.
Through Healthy Community Initiatives funding, the City of Greater Sudbury installed municipal water at the park.
We used part of the back ground beds for pumpkin/squash patch, and built a spiral herb garden at the front of the garden.
In partnership with Healthy Kids Community Challenge and the Community Garden Network, we involved four local schools in our school plantings: St-Dominique, Cyril Varney, Jean-Ethier Blais and Holy Trinity, and the Best Start Hub. The program was branded as Cultivate Your Neighbourhood. Children planted seeds and nurtured them in their classrooms, then came to plant their plants in June. We also held a summer garden celebration and a fall harvest lunch involving local schools and neighbourhood children.
We expanded our ground beds to accommodate more tomato, squash, zucchini, and pumpkin plantings. We set up a larger sunflower bed. We partnered with Holy Trinity school students and Johanna Westby, a local artist, to paint an "Art in the Park" community mural which will be installed in 2019. We continued to involve 4 local schools and the Best Start Hub in the Cultivate Your Neighbourhood project.
We installed the Art in the Park mural, along with a community garden sign. Ground beds were reconfigured, and Sudbury Shared Harvest built additional mini food forests around our fruit trees. We expanded our milkweed patch. We received additional support at for the Cultivate Your Neighbourhood and the summer maintenance of the garden from families at Place Hurtubise. We continued to involve 4 local schools and the Churchill Best Start Hub in the Cultivate Your Neighbourhood project. We built bean and pea teepees as a new feature at the garden.
Covid-19 hit, and we were unable to involve our 4 local schools and the Churchill Best Start in our Cultivate Your Neighbourhood project. We registered with Volunteer Sudbury to get more community volunteers involved as an alternative. In late April, community gardens were declared essential services by the Province of Ontario, so residents in the local area started seedlings for us, and then planted them at the garden. Covid-19 precautions, instructions for volunteers, and a Covid-19 focused orientation session were developed to make sure everyone stayed safe at the garden. The spiral herb garden was reconfigured and the mint was moved to a side bed by the picnic table. Because of staffing issues at the City of Greater Sudbury, volunteers began cutting the grass at the garden. We rejuvenated the Creator Turtle Garden with additional white stone and mulch. Our community partner Sudbury Shared Harvest expanded the food forest.
Covid-19 continued, and we were again unable to run our Cultivate Your Neighbourhood project. We installed trellises for peas and beans in two of our 8x4 garden beds, built a few new ground beds, and with our partner Sudbury Shared Harvest installed a new pollinator garden in the back area of the garden. We later expanded that garden to include more pollinator plants, and a second area for milkweed for butterflies and other pollinators. Signage detailing some of the features of the garden was designed and will be printed and installed in 2022. Lopes Ltd. donated an art butterfly bench that will also be installed in 2022. A few families volunteered to help paint the picnic table for the garden in a bright blue with butterfly, bees, and flowers layered on top.
We participated in Seedy Sunday at the South End Public Library. We received our yearly donation of Meeker's Mix from Vale Ltd. We returned to our primary schools to run our Cultivate Your Neighbourhood project. We worked with over 250 students at 4 locals chools (Cyril Varney, St. Dominique, Jean-Ethier-Blais, Holy Trinity) and a local Brownie troop to plant seeds, and nurture seedlings. The children then planted over 600 vegetables and companion flowers (marigolds and sunflowers) at the garden in early June. We installed the butterfly and bee painted picnic table in the front garden. We worked with the City of Greater Sudbury to create bilingual educational signage for the Twin Forks community garden’s Creator Turtle Garden art, pollinator garden, food forest, and milkweed patch; signage was installed in November by volunteers. We held gardening work bees to prepare the gardens for spring/summer and volunteers met regularly to learn more about gardening and to work on garden projects. We also held fall garden cleanup events. We built an entrance arbour at the front entrance and planted Concord grapes at its base. In partnership with a Canada Post project done with the Sudbury Community Garden Network, a new accessible garden bed and a regular bed were delivered to the garden in the fall. We installed the butterfly art bench donated by Lopes Ltd. in the back pollinator garden area. We reconstructed the spiral herb garden and planted additional perennial and annual herbs. We added stones to mark pollinator garden limits. The Sudbury Horticultural Society planted a cherry tree to celebrate the Year of the Garden. We installed our butterfly/bee picnic table on a slab poured by the City of Greater Sudbury. We fixed our damaged storge shed. Mayor Brian Bigger declared Pollinator Week at our pollinator garden. We held the grand opening of our pollinator garden at New Sudbury Days.
We again received our yearly donation of Meeker's Mix from Vale Ltd. We worked with 250+ primary school children at 3 local schools for the Cultivate Your Neighbourhood program (St. Dominique, Jean-Ethier-Blais, Holy Trinity; Cyril Varney had closed in 2022). We collaborated with Sudbury Secondary School to plant with some of their students. We completed the base of our garden entrance arbour and planted more Concord grapes at the base. We fixed worn-out sections of the Creator Turtle Garden boxes. We built accessible crusher dust paths throughout the garden. We created a formal garden around the Fabio Belli memorial plaque. We installed 3 hose stations to make watering easier for volunteers. We did a major revitalization of the back ground beds. We planted additional cherry trees in the back gardens. We planted additional pollinator plants in our pollinator gardens. We completed the wheelchair accessible raised garden bed. We created plant signage markers. Through a major sponsorship donation by Lopes Ltd, the City of Greater Sudbury built a greenhouse behind our back garden beds. We appled for HCI funding for fencing for the greenhouse and began planning for additional greenhouse amenities. We rebuilt the bridge linking both garden areas.
In 2024, we're working a number of great projects including:
- Our new greenhouse and a new shed to be constructed in June
- More ground bed spaces
- A hill garden at the front garden space
- A rejuvenation of the Turtle Creator Garden
- Planting apple trees to replace the ones lost to fireblight last year
- Planting additional pollinator plants
- Testing out ollas in our beds to save on water
- Working with 3 local schools to start plants for us
- And more!
From humble beginnings in 2014 when we started with 2 raised garden beds and 3 concrete culverts donated by Rainbow Concrete, we've built a beautiful garden! See the history above for what we've done, from community programming, to building additional beds, art features, a food forest, pollinator gardens, and more! Along the way, we've had the help of so many community partners.