What is the Slow Movement?

Those who follow the Slow Movement believe that over the last few decades, our lives have sped up like never before. They have set out to slow down their everyday lives in simple ways like the food they eat and the cities they live in.

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A good way to know where your food is coming from is to grow it yourself. In Halifax, there are a number of community garden projects sprouting up to help the young and old get dirty and grow their own food.

Pat MacLean is an organizer with the Spryfield Urban Garden, a community garden where locals can grow their own vegetables. She organizes an event called “Seedy Saturday” where local gardeners can swap seeds and learn more about gardens.

MacLean thinks the cost of food is a main reason why many people have started their own gardens. “To just go out and get a head of lettuce or package of tomatoes, that’s an expense you wouldn’t have if you had a little back garden,” she says. “Potatoes are really easy to grow, and that’s a staple food.”

MacLean is also convinced that teaching children how exciting gardening can be is the way of the future. The Spryfrield Urban Garden has a garden set up that grows potatoes, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, pumpkins, lettuce, and radishes.

“It’s a sense of achievement,” she says. “We let the kids just pull the carrot and we wash it off and they eat it right out of the garden. Carrots are not so bad when you get them right out of the garden!”

Marjorie LeBreton was manning a booth on the last Seedy Saturday—packaging and selling seeds and answering questions people had about gardening. She thinks the increase in popularity of gardening could come from the fact that there is a food shortage in the world.

“Maybe I would say, ‘Why wouldn’t you garden?’” she says. “We need to rely more on food that we produce here in Nova Scotia.”

LeBreton also agrees that gardening is a hobby that can slow down lives. “If you’re growing your own food, it takes time to collect and prepare it and eat it,” she adds.

Jayme Melrose, a city planning student at Dalhousie, also runs the community garden that grows on the top floor of the Life Sciences and Chemistry building.

“The majority of people that I’ve seen interested in gardening are in their 20’s or 30’s,” she says. At their planting meeting, a group of young students gather around, as well as a few older adults. A young woman mentions how she’s heard of children who don’t know where eggs come from. She grew up on a farm and comes to the community garden to go back to that.

Melrose thinks that gardening has slowed her down. “It’s part of this white Western paradigm that we have to be so productive,” she says. “It’s slow, it can’t be rushed.

There’s something so satisfying about planting a seed and seeing it through and eating it,” says Melrose.