In Toronto, a group of volunteer “park rangers” have started turning local yards and public spaces into a giant urban park.
Inspired by an idea from Richard Louv–an author known for coining the phrase “nature deficit disorder”–the Homegrown National Park Project is spearheaded by the David Suzuki Foundation, an environmental nonprofit based in Toronto.
“We were interested in crowdsourcing a green corridor through a city using people’s front yards, backyards, and balconies,” says Jode Roberts from the Suzuki Foundation.
“We’re playing with the idea of an urban environment becoming a national park. It’s very unlikely that the city of Toronto will become a national park in the traditional sense, but part of the fun is that we’re imposing this very different frame on the city, and trying to get people to think differently about how green our city is.”
The site runs along a “lost river” called Garrison Creek; like many cities, Toronto was built along streams that were eventually filled and paved once they became polluted. The Garrison, which used to be a place where people could fish for salmon or take a trip in a canoe, is still underground, but the group wanted to remind neighbors that it exists.
“We wanted to connect the people who lived throughout this corridor both with an ecological past and a potential future that might be much greener,” Roberts explains.
After putting out a call for neighbors interested in volunteering to be community leaders, the group picked 21 park rangers to work on the project over the summer. They gave the volunteers some basic training in skills like fundraising, introduced them to local groups like the Toronto Beekeepers, and showed them a few examples of urban interventions, such as guerrilla gardening and moss graffiti.