The Scope

“I’ll have a bit of this, and this, and this…” Mark Wilson raids the garden. (Lori Heath and Sister Sharon Basha in background)

For most St. John’s urbanites, harvest time is a rather lackluster affair, punctuated by the appearance of Halloween decorations and gnarly, feral-looking Atlantic-grown zucchinis in the florescent aisles of the local megastore.

Thanks to Lori Heath and Mark Wilson, the two masterminds behind St. John’s Safer Soil, the folks at the Gathering Place on Barnes Road will be celebrating harvest time the authentic way—with heaps of freshly plucked vegetables grown right in their very own downtown, lead-soaked yard.

Sarah Smellie crashes the party.

Just up from Military Road, along Barnes Road, is a magical little green space in front of the already magical Gathering Place, a drop-in center where people can get a hot meal, a bed or a helping hand. The space is home to a greenhouse flanked by raised bed gardens, and various containers stuffed with plants which will soon yield tomatoes, peppers, carrots, beets, basil and all kinds of other herbs and veggies.

Constructed over the past eight weeks by Lori Heath (coordinator of St. John’s Safer Soil), Mark Wilson (the Safer Soil go-to growing guru) and their mighty team of volunteers, it serves as a demonstration garden to show that safe gardening in contaminated soil really is possible. All of the veggies harvested will be used to feed the patrons of the Gathering Place.

An urban vegetable garden of any sort is rare in St. John’s. A 2003 study by MUN Geographer Dr. Trevor Bell revealed that most of the soil in town contained pretty noxious levels of lead, accumulated over years of lead-based paint use, coal generated heating, and gasoline powered transport. The established “safe” level of soil lead is 140 parts per million, but the median level of the samples taken from private properties around town by Dr. Bell was an alarming 744 ppm.

Hence, backyard vegetable gardens haven’t been too popular since.

Never one to be told she can’t do something, Lori Heath set about researching what she could do about it. Eventually, she established the Safer Soil network to educate people about the problem and how to cope. As the Safer Soil demonstration garden shows, with a little finesse, you can actually garden in this stuff.

“One of the things you want to do first is have your soil professionally tested,” says Heath. If you’re over the safe cutoff, you’ve got two options: use different soil or change the stuff you’ve got.

Container gardens and raised beds allow you to choose the soil you plant in, and both are easy to put together. The demonstration garden’s raised beds are just wooden frames with thick layers of newspaper or landscaping sheets lining the inside to form a barrier between the healthy and contaminated soil. Using nutrient-rich compost in the soil, they’ve got some impressive results.

“We’ve probably already got 40 pounds of greens out of our eight-by-four foot box,” says Wilson.
For containers, you can use anything that will hold a pile of dirt, they say.

“There are so many things around town that you can scavenge to plant in and make raised beds out of,” says Wilson, gesturing to the milk crates, fish pans, big pots and overturned bookshelves stuffed with healthy soil and plants.

To get the lead out of the soil, they’re using a technique called phytoremediation, which involves planting certain plants known to absorb pollutants from the soil. Their phytoremediation bed is an in-ground garden with staggered rows of local Goldenrod, harvested from Pippy Park and renowned for its sucking-lead-from-soil powers. A brilliant row of sunflowers, also excellent lead absorbers, line the back of the bed.

“We’re expecting good results,” says Wilson. “Some results that we’ve seen published by a group in Massachusetts show a twenty five percent reduction in just six weeks.”

Safer Soil has been hosting workshops on safe gardening all summer and are now offering free tours of the demonstration garden to anyone, be it families or office groups, who want to learn more about growing their own food.

“We want to use it as a teaching tool for people interested in gardening and to promote urban gardening,”says Heath. “Urban gardening is so important. There are so many issues addressed by it.”

“Growing your own food instead of having it shipped in from California reduces your food mileage and you know where the food from your backyard comes from and that it’s grown safely,” she says. “It’s also lot more nutritious.”

“I find, too, that it’s a cultural issue,” says Wilson. “Typically, this is a very self-reliant, self-sustaining culture. Growing your own food really contributes to that. Give people the knowledge and tools to grow their own food and you really benefit them.”

At that point, Sister Sharon Basha, who runs the Gathering Centre, came out to chat.

“This is just amazing,” she tells me. Wilson hands her a bunch of fresh-picked kale and reminds her about the lettuce she’ll be getting the day after.

“Right,” she says, beaming. “We’re going to need some salad dressing.”

To contact Safer Soil, visit their website at safersoil.ning.com.