The guerilla gardener of downtown Prince George was fenced off from her food.
City hall put up the wall, but when they found out they were blocking someone's hand-tended food source, they agreed to open the gate, a little at least.
The City of Prince George is building a new urban park on the plot of land west of the Wood Innovation & Design Centre on the north side of Fifth Avenue. On the edge of that land - currently a parking lot - are some concrete planters that have had little success as the home for flowers. Michele Rhodes is someone with limited financial means, mobility challenges, as well as chronic pancreatitis that deeply restricts her diet. She did not have permission, but she took it upon herself to enliven those planters with greenery. She does have expressed permission to tend another garden plot on the property of The Chinese Store only a short distance away, where she has also installed a wooden carving and a poem painted onto a post. Rhodes is also an artist.
She carefully cultivated an abundant vegetable garden in those cement blocks along the street. Rhodes ate the produce herself - a cornucopia of different veggies and also some decorative flowers - but also donated some to others, and left it to the honour system if anyone needed to pluck some for themselves.
This week, however, she was walled off from her nutritious plot by a security fence put up to keep the public from wandering into danger on the worksite. She was told by the construction crew that her garden was destined to be dismantled by the end of summer.
"I'm 61 years old, bi-polar, on disability," said Rhodes. "For the last four years I've been guerilla gardening two of the city's beds... The gardens have been appreciated by the public and when they see me out there they always have nice things to say."
When she looked at the designs for the new park she noticed that the flower beds she'd commandeered were not actually part of the redevelopment. The cement structures were not relevant to the new urban greenspace. That sparked some hope in Rhodes.
"Question: Why can't my beds be incorporated into the (outskirts of) the park?" she said.
Actually, came city hall's reply, that may perhaps be possible.
"Viking Construction (the city's contractor for the project) is going to give her access to her garden in the short-term," said city hall spokesperson Rob van Adrichem. "They will do so in a way that doesn't compromise the safety of the worksite. But in the long run that access will have to be lost. There doesn't seem to be a way around that fact, but they are going to let those beds keep providing food for Ms. Rhodes as best they can."
Van Adrichem said it was not lost on anyone involved in the park's construction that there was no obligation to accommodate Rhodes, she was garden squatting after all, but it was also not missed by anyone with city staff or the construction company that someone in need had taken it upon themselves to do something net-positive for the community.
"It's actually been something we've talked about," said van Adrichem, who knew of Rhodes by name. "Encouraging local food production is a really great thing. We have a construction project to do, but it brings in a bigger conversation and we're definitely having a larger conversation about what can be done. It's about how to help Michele, but it is also about how that might impact the whole community. Can we establish a community garden somewhere near there? Can we involve the private sector in that somehow? We tend a lot of flower beds but does all that have to be flowers? Could we raise some vegetables as well? There is no finger-snap solution that's really simple and elegant, but absolutely we want to work with her to find a way that will help her and help others."
"A downtown community garden would be really great," Rhodes said. "And I would love to be able to keep growing where I'm growing. That big building there is called the Wood Innovation & Design Centre. Doesn't that sound like a place where smart people value the things that grow from the ground?"
