A few years ago we had a gorgeous little Sharing Garden in the alley behind the Second Wave Board Shop on Lonsdale, when that block was slated for demolition we lost the garden quite suddenly (that was a sad day). However the neighbouring condo building, Sailview, had enjoyed looking down on our garden for years. When their parking lot roof garden was cleared out so they could fix a leak, they thought we might want to turn it into a vegetable garden. We said yes, and then embarked on a surprisingly complicated process to get the garden in because Sailview is a strata; strata councils have special rules and regulations, and it took time to navigate them to make sure we’d crossed all our ‘t’s and dotted our ‘i’s.
We realized that there were few resources to help people interested in developing gardens on strata owned land, so we used our experience at Sailview and some further research to develop the “Starting a Food Garden: A resource guide for strata corporations“.
You can also download a printable copy of the guide (4MB file): Starting a Food Garden
The Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia funded this project.