Urban Eden Community Garden

Urban Eden Community Garden Urban Eden Community Garden Gardeners must live within the downtown area as shown on the City of Edmonton Neighbourhood Map. We invite you to drop by and visit.

Urban Eden Community Garden is a wholly independent group of gardeners holding an annual contract with the City of Edmonton through the Partners in Parks program. It is administered by an elected committee consisting of one or two Community Garden Coordinators, Secretary, Treasurer, Event Coordinators, Flower Coordinators and other positions as needed seasonally. http://www.edmonton.ca/residential

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Urban Eden gardeners join a cordial community. First year gardeners rent a half-plot and have the opportunity to earn a full plot through volunteer time and their participation in the spring and autumn clean-ups. Each gardener is provided with a contract at the start of each season detailing courtesies, rules and responsibilities for gardening on the site. All are required to contribute a minimum of 8 hours towards site maintenance which includes mowing, trimming, w**d control, filling water barrels, watering and care of perennial beds and fruit trees, picking up litter and participating in work projects. Spring and fall cleanups and renovation projects are mandatory projects. History:
Urban Eden is not a community league project. Many of the original garden organisers were extremely active in community association and league projects. This caused some confusion for new league boards who occasionally tried to take management of the garden. This was resolved with the help of John Helder, then senior City Horticulturist and City Parks management. The garden received its start thanks to help from Bev Zubot and Mary Jane Buchanan, the Downtown Community Coordinators for "Playful Downtown Edmonton." They organised a "Sharing Community Treasures" event and a “Downtown Community Corn Fest” at Dick Mather Park. Based on residents' feedback and assisted by Kim Sanderson from Edmonton Community Services, the coordinators organised a Community Planning Walkabout to view the Warehouse and McKay Avenue Districts to assess how to make the communities more friendly for residents, children, youth and families. Those interested in gardening formed their own group out of this Walkabout and Our Urban Eden, as it was then known, was established in 1999 immediately north of the garden's current location on Bellamy Hill. The garden group applied for and received funding provided by a grant from TD Canada Trust with additional sponsorship by Muttart Conservatory. After seven seasons, the City of Edmonton put the property up for sale and the garden closed. The gardeners lobbied for a new space and were granted a permanent site in the same block on Bellamy HIll in conjunction with Partners in Parks. A generous start-up grant from the Community Garden Network (now Sustainable Food Edmonton), and construction by the City of Edmonton provided 28 new beds in a location immediately south of the old location. Our CRC in 2008, Barb Ursuliak, arranged a community league donation based on their ability to recover the funds through a federal matching program. That, along with a Manasc Isaac donation and NPDP funding enabled the leveling of the south third of the site and the addition of 9 new beds which gives us the 37 raised garden beds we have today. After 10 seasons in the new location, our garden beds and flower containers were in desperate need of repair. We were just sourcing grants when we were absolutely surprised and delighted to receive a 2015 community development grant from Toyota. Exceptional assistance from Mike Nault and Derek Radke at the West-end Home Depot enabled us to overcome the difficulties of having no power on site. We completed over half of our planned projects that year and have been replacing garden beds as needed. Our garden shed was broken into and vandalised in 2022; we received an emergency grant from SFE for repairs and were able to replace our tools and materials from our savings. Sustainable Food Edmonton also matched our contribution to repairs with a renovation grant in 2023. We replaced 16 beds in 2023 and will replace another 5 in 2025. Urban Eden Community Garden has hosted social and learning events for members as well as open community events including potluck suppers, group visits, tours and an annual open house. We have provided garden space for the Inner City Children's Project, and participated in their summer camps with day visits and workshops in birdhouse construction as well as traditional paper-making incorporating cotton and abaca with garden plant materials and natural fibres. We have contributed to the Edmonton Food Bank (grow a row) and Meals on Wheels. We've met many local residents who visit, eat lunch, read or shortcut through the garden as well as out-of-towners who've noticed the garden from their hotel rooms and ventured down the hill.

05/28/2026

:We have a couple of garden plots open for rental:

URBAN EDEN GARDEN
If you're just hoping to rent a little patch of land to garden, we're actually NOT the place for you.

Our gardeners do not just rent a space - they join a working community. Urban Eden is city parkland specifically allocated to our garden group through the Partners in Parks program. We are fully responsible for the site maintenance. This includes mowing, trimming, filling water barrels, w**ding and watering communal flower beds, cleaning the site and participating in work bees such as bed repair and replacement, or tidying and prepping for tours and special events. A few beds may need full lumber replacement before they can be used this season; if so, we'll work over two or three dates in May/early June depending on the weather and lumber availability. We'll vary days and times so that everyone is able to work at least one shift.

All garden members are required to contribute time towards site maintenance, a minimum of 8 hours per season plus spring and fall cleanups and a minimum of one work shift when bed replacement or other repairs are needed. Everyone chips in so the work is enjoyable and so is the company - sharing tasks is also a great chance to meet your fellow gardeners.

Those who don't fulfill their mandatory volunteer hours are not considered to be in good standing and will not be invited back; those who contribute their required time or more can apply for a full plot the following season. We place our current gardeners first, depending upon availability and the amount of their volunteer hours, then fill remaining spaces from our wait list. People on our waitlist are placed according to the first date of their inquiry.

All new households start with a 4'x7' space which is half a bed. The fee for the season is $25 and $10 of that is refundable when the plot is completed at the end of the season. Plots which are not cleared and dug are considered abandoned and those gardeners are cancelled. Plots which are neglected for more than two weeks without notice during the season also result in cancellation and any produce remaining will be shared by gardeners or donated to the Edmonton Food Bank.

Our only requirement is that you are a downtown resident and agree to commit to the mandatory volunteer hours. Membership is not transferable; you may not rent a space for someone else to use or pass it on to someone else when you leave.

WOW!
05/25/2026

WOW!

This is not a painting. It is not a render made for a film. Every structure you can see in this image is real, positioned where it actually sits inside a human cell, built from experimental data collected across decades of biological research.

The image is the work of Evan Charney, Janet Iwasa, and Ludovic Autin at the Scripps Research Institute, assembled using three separate imaging techniques combined into a single model. X-ray crystallography reveals the atomic structure of individual proteins. Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy maps molecules in solution. Cryo-electron microscopy, the technique that earned its developers the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, flash-freezes biological samples and images them at near-atomic resolution without the distortion that comes from traditional preparation methods. Together, these three datasets produced the most molecularly complete visualisation of a human cell ever constructed.

What you are looking at is the interior of a white blood cell. The large purple and beige folded structure near the bottom is the nucleus, containing the cell's DNA. The small coloured specks filling almost every available space are individual protein molecules, ribosomes, and molecular machines, each one performing a specific function at this exact moment. The cell is not an empty container with a few organelles floating inside it. It is packed, almost to the point of appearing chaotic, with machinery operating simultaneously at scales too small to see.

A single human cell contains roughly 42 million protein molecules. They fold, bind, signal, transport, repair, and replicate in a coordinated system that biology is still mapping. The cell is approximately 10 micrometres across, roughly one tenth the width of a human hair, and inside it, this is what is happening right now.

Your body contains approximately 37 trillion of them.

Every one of them looks like this. Every one of them is doing this. All at once, continuously, without any conscious instruction from you, for every second of your life.

04/28/2026

We have openings for our community garden this season. If you live in the downtown core and would like to garden with us, please message us here.

URBAN EDEN GARDEN

If you're just hoping to rent a little patch of land to garden, we're actually NOT the place for you.

Our gardeners do not just rent a space - they join a working community. Urban Eden is city parkland specifically allocated to our garden group through the Partners in Parks program. We are fully responsible for the site maintenance. This includes mowing, trimming, filling water barrels, w**ding and watering communal flower beds, cleaning the site and participating in work bees such as bed repair and replacement, or tidying and prepping for tours and special events. A few beds may need full lumber replacement before they can be used this season; if so, we'll work over two or three dates in May depending on the weather and lumber availability. We'll vary days and times so that everyone is able to work at least one shift.

All garden members are required to contribute time towards site maintenance, a minimum of 8 hours per season plus spring and fall cleanups and a minimum of one work shift when bed replacement or other repairs are needed. Everyone chips in so the work is enjoyable and so is the company - the two cleanups are also a great chance to meet your fellow gardeners.

Those who don't fulfill their mandatory volunteer hours are not considered to be in good standing and will not be invited back; those who contribute their required time or more can apply for a full plot the following season. We place our current gardeners first, depending upon availability and the amount of their volunteer hours, then fill remaining spaces from our wait list. People on our waitlist are placed according to the first date of their inquiry.

All new households start with a 4'x7' space which is half a bed. The fee for the season is $25 and $10 of that is refundable when the plot is completed at the end of the season. Plots which are not cleared and dug are considered abandoned and those gardeners are cancelled. Plots which are neglected for more than two weeks without notice during the season also result in cancellation and any produce remaining will be shared by gardeners or donated to the Edmonton Food Bank.

Our only requirement is that you are a downtown resident and agree to commit to the mandatory volunteer hours. Membership is not transferable; you may not rent a space for someone else to use or pass it on to someone else when you leave.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.6548647
04/28/2026

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/1.6548647

Considering joining the community garden in your neighbourhood? Here’s community garden manager Dawn Woolsey with what you can expect when it comes to cost, time and community.

03/27/2025

We've had a couple of spaces open up for rental. Please private message us for garden information and application. Our only requirement is that you live in the immediate downtown core.

03/24/2025

We are booked for the 2025 season, please message us for placement on our waiting list.

Address

9836 Bellamy Hill Road
Edmonton, AB

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