Residents want Iqaluit to blossom

DENISE RIDEOUT

IQALUIT — Some residents with green thumbs and a love of gardening want to build a community garden in Iqaluit.

They envision constructing a large greenhouse with about 80 garden plots, where residents could plant potatoes, chives, flowers or anything else they can coax from the soil.

The greenhouse is the dream of a group of avid and aspiring gardeners who’ve come together to form the Iqaluit Community Greenhouse Society.

Tanya Smith, who grows tomatoes, carrots, green onions, chives and potatoes in a six-by-eight-foot greenhouse on her deck, thinks it would be wonderful to have a community-run greenhouse.

“It’s just an amazing feeling to walk into a greenhouse,” Smith said.

John Lamb, another member of the society, said the greenhouse is as much about bringing the community together as it is about gardening.

“The actual doing of the gardening is good for the people who are doing it,” Lamb said.

“Growing things is something that inherently feels good.”

“It’s just an amazing feeling to walk into a greenhouse.”

– Tanya Smith, member, Iqaluit Greenhouse Society

Lamb said the greenhouse could serve as a gathering place where families could tend their plots, elders could teach about arctic flora and students could grow plants for science classes.

While this may seem like a lofty vision, a similar project has taken off in Inuvik, and has been praised for its success.

Ron Morrison, a member of Inuvik’s greenhouse society, said the greenhouse there had its first seeds planted in the spring of 2000.

The 100-by-200-foot building has 76 garden plots rented by families, schools and business.

“When you go into the greenhouse on any given day there’s an elder over there working on her plot, there’s a couple of young kids, eight-, nine- and 10-year-olds, planting things,” Morrison said.

The greenhouse also has a commercial garden that sells plants and vegetables to local restaurants, businesses and offices.

Morrison said the greenhouse’s flowers can be seen throughout the town, hanging in baskets on telephone poles and lining gardens of public housing units.

Members of Iqaluit’s greenhouse society hope to capture some of that success here. The greenhouse would be modelled on the one in Inuvik.

For now, the proposed Iqaluit greenhouse is in its early stages.

They society is looking for money to pay for a feasibility study before it goes further with the project.

Organizers also have to find a location for the building and raise money to construct and maintain it.

One location they’re considering is near the power plant, where they could tap into the plant’s waste heat to warm the greenhouse.

Members of the society, including John Lamb and Tanya and Paul Smith, presented their greenhouse proposal to the Iqaluit city council two weeks ago.

The group isn’t asking the council to fund the project. Rather, it wants to partner with the city so that it can tap into grants from the territorial and federal governments.

Lamb admits there’s a lot of planning and fundraising ahead, but that isn’t deterring anyone. He said if Inuvik can be made to bloom, Iqaluit can do the same.