Dear Host Program Participants - Have you considered Vegetable Gardening as one of your HOST activities? Gardening is a great way to get exercise, relax outdoors, and access food that is fresh and healthy. If you and your match are interested in gardening but don’t have the space to do it, you can access land through our wonderful partnership with The Stop Community Food Centre (The Stop) and garden it together. If one of you has access to a yard already, you may want to consider grow food there together, and register through The Stop's YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) Program to access gardening support and resources from The Stop.

The Stop helps facilitate the garden sharing matches, and offers a tool lending library, some free seedlings, and free gardening workshops to our matches to learn more about organic edible gardening technique. By participating in both Host and YIMBY programs, you will not only grow friendly relationship with your match partner, but also grow and share great food together.

The Stop Community Food Centre is a non-profit organization in the west end of Toronto that is dedicated to increasing community member’s access to healthy food. The Stop offers a wide variety of community programs, including a food bank and drop-in centre, community kitchens, community gardens, perinatal program, civic engagement, bake ovens and farmers' markets, sustainable food systems education and urban agriculture. Recently, The Stop has launched a new backyard gardening program called Yes In My Back Yard (YIMBY), to connect people who would like to grow a food garden but do not have the space to do so, to yard owners that have extra space they are willing to share. The gardening season is fast approaching. Talk to your match this week about this green idea.

You can contact Liz Curran at The Stop Community Food Centre: 416-651-7867 ext. 27 or email: liz@thestop.org to learn more about how YIMBY can enhance your match activities.