If there’s one thing that links city folk to agriculture, it’s food.

Westerner Park’s events and sales coordinator Christina Sturgeon wants to strengthen that connection through a new urban farm that was installed on park grounds last Friday.

The farm consists of 10 wooden garden boxes located outside the park’s race track, each one with a footprint roughly the size of a large desk. Each is outfitted with a wicking bed irrigation system, as well as a “bug bed” that attracts pollinators.

Sturgeon wants use it to show city dwellers that they too, can grow their own food.

“You’re thinking urban farm, you’re thinking row after row of vegetables in this big space. Lucky for us at Westerner Park, we have that space,” Sturgeon says.

“(But) I want them to take a look at the garden boxes and the container gardening and the different growing techniques that we’re going to utilize and say, ‘You know what? I like that. I think I can take that home and I can do that on my deck.’”

(From left, Aleshia Shaw and Karen Lutz planting crops at Westerner Park's urban farm on May 26 in Red Deer.)

Staff and volunteers gathered that day, planting potatoes, zucchinis, cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes and strawberries. Come harvest time, those crops will be donated back to the community through organizations such as Hope Mission and the Red Deer Food Bank, Sturgeon says.

The urban farm has been on Sturgeon’s mind for months.

It is only one aspect to her urban farming vision.

Later this summer, on Aug. 20, Westerner will host a new event called the Urban Farm Festival, a farmer’s market and tradeshow.

“People can come, meet the producers, learn about what they grow and how they grow it. We’ll have demos and workshops on different urban farming techniques and food preservation,” Sturgeon says.

The third part of the project includes a long-table dinner called Taste of Home. It will feature a menu prepared by the Holiday Inn’s executive chef Emmanuel David, using only locally-sourced ingredients.

 

(Karen Lutz, working on Westerner Park's urban farm on May 26.)