Through collective gardening, we promote urban agriculture and raise public awareness of the issues concerning food security. Action Communiterre provides many activities throughout the season like workshops on organic growing, civic engagement, seed-saving, balcony gardening, nutrition, medicinal plants, and many more. These gardens create the setting in which community ties are developed and active citizenship is encouraged, by providing everyone with hands-on learning opportunities to produce and consume healthy organic foods in a dynamic and enriching group setting.

By becoming a member for $5 a year or 5 hours of volunteer work, gardeners gather once or twice a week to learn, work together, and eventually share the harvest. Produce is shared amongst the gardeners and a sizable portion of it is redistributed through the NDG Food Depot, community organizations and social services in the neighborhood. In 2008 the Victory Garden Network produced 1881 kg of organic fruits and vegetables, of which 1/3 was shared with community partners like the NDG Food Depot.

Every fall we host the Action Communiterre Harvest Fest, an event for and by Victory Garden Network gardeners. Here we take the opportunity to celebrate yet another fruitful season of our collective gardening efforts. We have also winter activities like workshop on seeds and fruit tree pruning Fun for everybody all year!

Community Gardening in Montréal

Montreal is known as a gardening Mecca thanks to our municipally run community gardening program, which ranks among the most extensive in North America. Montreal's gardening movement has a very interesting social history, (see Social History of Urban Agriculture in Montreal), which recently began a new chapter. Over the past few years, grass roots organizations concerned with community development and food security have begun gardening with a more explicit social focus.