Gardens in the sky yield earthly delights
Roofs across the city offer growing space for urban farmers

Toronto Star, July 3, 2000
By Graeme Smith, Toronto Star Staff Reporter

The warehouse roof grows quieter around this time of year.

As the sun gets hotter each day, Lauren Baker tends her rooftop farm only in the early mornings and late evenings.

``It can get unbearably hot up here,'' Baker said.

The lazy heat comes at the right time, now that the bulk of this season's work is over. Baker and her team of helpers were busy last week, transplanting tomato seedlings high above the cracked asphalt of Eastern Ave., where the road ends among industrial buildings beside the Don Valley Parkway.

They had nurtured the plants since February in a greenhouse above FoodShare Metro Toronto's warehouse, then carried the seedlings up a ladder to another section of roof and set them in plastic-lined troughs.

Transplanting finished last week, marking the end of Baker's busy spring season and the start of a summer.

``I like being part of the whole cycle,'' says the tanned 28-year-old woman with dirt under her fingernails. ``Going through the seed catalogue and choosing plants and seeing them grow.''

Baker has farmed this roof for three years with help from FoodShare, a non-profit organization that promotes healthy eating. The roof's harvest is distributed as part of a nutrition program.

Baker's project on the FoodShare warehouse is probably Toronto's only large-scale rooftop farm, but she's just one of many city dwellers for whom summer means growing food high above the streets.

Her warehouse garden is almost visible from the roof of the Royal York hotel, where executive chef John Cordeaux grows fines herbes.

Dozens of floors below, Cordeaux runs Canada's largest hotel kitchen, serving 4,000 to 6,000 meals daily. The job is demanding and fast-paced. ``It's like a high every day,'' said the energetic, English-born chef.

But after Cordeaux steps out of the elevator and charges up the last few flights of stairs, and after pausing to place his chef's hat gingerly beside the door (``it gets windy up here'') he steps on to the roof and his pace slows.

``We're trying to create a little oasis,'' he says, gesturing at white-uniformed apprentices installing a patio table and chairs beside a row of potted plum trees just beginning to show their first fruit.

Seizing an opportunity, a younger chef ventures: ``We could hold apprentice meetings up here.''

``Maybe,'' says Cordeaux with a smile. ``If you keep your nose clean.''

As he walks among the wooden planters brimming with coriander, tarragon, mint, chives, purple basil, Italian parsley and other edible plants, Cordeaux brushes each with his fingers. The boxes will supply all the herbs he needs for the hotel's fine dining rooms throughout the summer.

There's nothing like the scent of herbs picked just moments ago, Cordeaux says, plucking a sprig of lemon thyme, rolling it between his fingers and inhaling the scent. ``With chicken, this is mmMMM!''

Cordeaux is not the only one who appreciates the obvious difference between food trucked into the city and the kind grown just steps from the kitchen.

It's also one reason Mike Moody, building manager at a commercial studio building at 401 Richmond St. W., spends his nights and weekends puttering on his rooftop garden.

Last year, Moody's crop of onions, herbs, green peppers, tomatoes and broccoli supplemented the building's downstairs restaurant.

``Best onions I've ever eaten,'' Moody exclaims.

He began planting above the former factory complex about five years ago, with a modest collection of shrubs and a few bags of earth hauled up in the freight elevator.

He's become more serious since then - now his soil comes from a small hill of dirt dumped on the roof by crane. And he's growing many of his plants from seed.

It isn't easy. Rooftop growing conditions can be harsh and there's little research available. Last summer, Cordeaux's cucumbers were scorched by the sun and disease spoiled Baker's tomatoes.

That's why Baker is intent on learning. Each harvest yields information. With a master's degree in environmental studies from York University, she's experimenting with nine types of tomatoes, four eggplant varieties, six kinds of peppers and countless salad greens. This summer she'll test three soil mixtures and try planting white, translucent Pomme D'Amour tomatoes. If each variety thrives, the crop could weigh over 200 kilograms.

Next spring, Baker even plans to try beehives.

The young researcher shares her results with a burgeoning community of urban gardeners at workshops and seminars.

``People get excited by the potential of rooftop gardening,'' Baker says. ``You look out and there's so much empty space and you think, `Why couldn't we be doing this more?' ''

Although full-fledged rooftop farms remain on the fringe, green roofs are catching on. A coalition of businesses, Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, formed last year and is planting a test garden this summer above the Eastview Neighbourhood Community Centre.

The city's environmental task force has recommended another test garden on the roof of City Hall.

A garden sprang up on the roof of Mountain Equipment Co-op's new building on King St. W. near Charlotte St. Others are in the works at the Merchandise Building at Mutual and Gould Sts. and at York University's computer science building.

The growing interest is welcome to veteran rooftop gardeners like Moody.

From his roof downtown, he points to the steel and glass cityscape. ``It's dead, eh? And you could bring it back to life.''