A COMMUNITY GARDEN THAT WELCOMES EVEN DRUG USERS

The name is intentionally ironic, a rebuke to the NIMBYs, those
Not-In-My-Back-Yarders who would throw walls up around their
neighbourhoods.

It's called MOBY.

It stands for My Own Back Yard.

It's a registered society. It counts about 100 members, all of them
neighbours in the vicinity of Commercial and 11th Avenue in Vancouver.

It's a densely urban neighbourhood. The elevated SkyTrain line bisects
it. Broadway is a block away, and the traffic is constant. The nearby
SkyTrain station is notorious for the criminal element it attracts,
and the area is bedevilled by drug users. This neighbourhood's
backyards have long been compromised by the worst a city can offer.

But it is still a neighbourhood. And in 2003, when the city invited
submissions for community-oriented projects, neighbours responded with
an idea for a community garden on what was then an asphalt-covered
lot. The lot was owned by the city. It lay beside and below the
SkyTrain line.

The catalyst for the garden was a young guy named Jason O'Brien. He
lives next door to the vacant lot. A graduate of Emily Carr's
industrial design program, O'Brien walked the neighbourhood with a
petition and signed up neighbours for the project.

It was his notion that the presence of a community garden could help
counteract the open drug trade that had sprung up in the alleyway
beside the vacant lot. Meth addicts shot up in the alleyway in broad
daylight, and some had set up little cardboard shanties to sleep in.
Everyday, bin divers would strew garbage all over the alley.

It was a classic case of what academics call environmental
criminology. The cold, concrete landscape of vacant lots and loading
docks, all of it overshadowed by the massive bulk of the elevated
SkyTrain line, was an incubator for crime. Property theft was rampant.

"The crime rate was astronomical," O'Brien said. "Last year, seven
neighbours on my street were broken into, including myself."

In 2005, the city approved the MOBY proposal and gave it a grant of
$93,000. O'Brien was appointed project manager. When it came time
break ground, dozens of neighbours came out and levelled out 22 loads
of fill the city brought in.

They did it by hand, in the rain. Thirty raised wooden beds were
constructed in a hexagon pattern, to mimic a honeycomb, and then
planted. The garden now boasts the usual eclectic mix of a community
garden: beets, peppers, sunflowers, tomatoes, celery, kale, eggplants,
onions, even watermelon.

Nothing odd in any of this: the city is dotted with community
gardens.

But the approach the neighbourhood took on the garden was one of
inclusivity, not one of exclusivity. Anyone was welcome to work in
it.

"We took the position," O'Brien said, "of inviting everybody into this
space and made it a drug and alcohol-free zone. But we'd invite
everyone -- even [drug] users on the street."

The garden had its intended effect. With an increase in the presence
of neighbours working near it, fewer and fewer addicts frequented the
alleyway. The binners stopped littering. This year, so far, O'Brien
said, he has not heard of any break-ins on the block.

The MOBY society is now planning to build a playground in the vacant
city lot just across the street from the garden. There is a daycare
centre on the corner of Commercial and 11th, and the neighbours want
to provide somewhere for the kids to play outside.

But there is more to this story.

Part of that philosophy of inclusivity was extended to the clients of
O'Brien's next-door neighbour.

His next-door neighbour is the Pacifica Treatment Centre, a 35-bed
drug addiction rehabilitation facility funded by the Vancouver Coastal
Health Authority.

A couple of times during the week, O'Brien said, clients of the
treatment centre will work in the garden. For them, it's a form of
therapy.

The centre has been there since 1993, and is housed in a handsome
building that looks like an upscale condominium development. Many of
the neighbours have no idea of its purpose. The only thing identifying
it is a sign over the door that reads, simply, "Pacifica" -- not that
the facility tries to camouflage its purpose. Its manager, Jaret Clay,
was happy to speak with me when I dropped by unannounced.

"You can talk to the neighbours," he said. "Ask them. There's just
been no problems."

In other parts of the city recently, the prospect of a treatment
centre or residence for recovering addicts has caused huge outcries.
Many fear such facilities will have a corrosive effect on their
neighbourhoods -- that they will create crime, that unsupervised
addicts will endanger neighbourhood residents, that children will be
exposed to the culture of drugs, that such facilities will drive down
real estate prices.

But Clay pointed out their clients come from everywhere. Pacifica was
not a facility for local addicts. It was a facility for addicts from
anywhere.

"The bottom line," he said, "is that addicts come from every walk of
life. Rich, poor, middle class. Rich neighbourhoods, poor
neighbourhoods."

They just can't find treatment in every neighbourhood, or a garden to
till.