Need a little cross-cultural inspiration for your garden this spring? The Burnaby Village Museum has created a plot to showcase what Burnaby residents are growing, and there are contributions from a variety of cultures.
“Without actually going around and spying on your neighbours, you can come take a look inside this giant garden box and you are going to see what’s growing in Burnaby backyards,” said museum curator Lisa Codd.
The museum is showcasing the garden this weekend, when the site opens for the season. While the seeds have been sown, nothing has sprouted yet, but there will be signs showing what’s beneath the ground.
There are some common plants – like garlic chives, cilantro and Romano beans – and there are also more unusual varieties from various cultures. The garden includes: warba potatoes (good for Italian gnocchi); a type of zucchini that’s popular in Palestine; Asian greens, like bok choy and mizuna; methi, a bitter green used in Asian flatbread; and chayote, a gourd from Mexico that’s also popular in China. People perusing the museum grounds can talk to staff for gardening tips and there will be information available on recipes and how to prepare and preserve the plants.
When the museum announced the garden project in March, staff called on the community for suggestions of things to plant. Codd said about a dozen people got involved, inviting museum staff to their gardens and homes, while sharing recipes and samples of preserved home-grown food.
Master gardener Haydn Thomas then researched the plants, grew most of them from seed and designed the layout of the garden. The result, once the garden is in full bloom, will be a selection of what local people from diverse cultures are growing and eating.
“If you were to peek over the back fences in Burnaby, not that we’re recommending that, these are what you would see,” Codd said. “There are so many different cultures that have transplanted themselves to Burnaby, … and there’s this incredible biodiversity in backyards.”
Some people bring seeds from their home country even if they are not supposed to, Codd added, although the garden was sewn with seeds all available in Canada. Since the selected plants all come from local gardeners, the varieties can handle Burnaby’s growing conditions.
The museum plans to partner with a food charity to give the harvest away, and there are already talks with Burnaby Food First about hosting events at the garden.
For someone like Codd, who doesn’t garden, the project has given her a new appreciation for the practice.
“I think what Haydn has created is going to be a growing work of art. The idea that all these plants have a story, with specific recipes and specific ways to preserve them, … all these people swapping recipes and leaving bags of parsley on neighbour’s doorsteps, it’s a wonderful little world,” she said. “There’s this story of community that’s happening over the fence. It’s wild.”
The Burnaby Village Museum, at 6501 Deer Lake Ave., opens this Saturday, May 2, from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Admission is free.
