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Lakeside Community Garden is located in Kingston’s west end. We provide growing space for individuals, families and community groups using organic gardening practices with no chemical fertilizers or pesticides.

Lakeside Community Garden hosts a large donation garden, a butterfly garden, a seed saving space, a food forest, and many other projects proposed and carried out by the members, all playing an important role in building food sovereignty in Kingston.

Vision

Lakeside is an edible ecosystem where people, plants, insects, seeds, soil, and water flourish together as a community.

Mission

Together with our partners, Lakeside cultivates community, food and seed sovereignty, biodiversity, and climate resilience. We work not only to grow a harvest, but to support the health of the entire edible ecosystem.

Values

  1. Community: We grow more than food. We grow belonging. Community at Lakeside is built through shared work, shared knowledge, and shared abundance. Members and partners don’t just lease space, they contribute to the Lakeside community.
  2. Partnerships: Partners contribute to bringing Lakeside’s vision to life. Each offers distinct community, knowledge, and practice: seeds adapted for local climate resilience, culturally significant foods, harvest donated to those in need, land-based learning, and food skills built with young people with exceptionalities. Each partnership makes our ecosystem richer, our community wider.
  3. Reciprocity: Lakeside gifts us food, medicine, beauty, and teaching. We reciprocate by giving thanks, sharing abundance, saving seed, and cultivating habitat for our ecological kin.
  4. Food and seed sovereignty: Food and seed sovereignty is the right of every community to grow, save, and share their own food and seed. At Lakeside, that means growing for our tables, for donation, for cultural connection, for ceremony, and for resilience.
  5. Biodiversity: Birds, insects, and microorganisms are kin who call Lakeside home. They pollinate and protect crops, build soil, and weave us into the web of life. Lakeside’s recognition as a Biodiversity Supportive Area reflects our commitment to the kin who share this land.
  6. Climate resilience: We grow and save open-pollinated seeds adapted to place. We experiment by trialling landraces, comparing methods, and learning what thrives in a changing climate. We build soil that retains more water, supports more life, and grows more resilient with each season.
  7. Inclusion and belonging: Lakeside is for everyone, regardless of gender, race, class, age, or ability. We’re always working to improve accessibility and inclusion. We reach out to communities who might not otherwise find us, inviting them to shape the space themselves.
  8. Learning together: The land is our wisest teacher. We learn by growing, experimenting, and observing. We share what we learn through conversations, workshops, workbees, and citizen science. We aim to make curiosity contagious.

History

We were granted the use of 1 acre of fallow farmland on Collin’s Bay Institution Prison Farm property in August of 2012 through an agreement with the City of Kingston. Our first year, we amended the heavy clay soil by planting a buckwheat cover crop (adding nitrogen and organic matter to the soil).

The Garden opened to the public in 2013 offering 50 allotment plots to the Kingston community.  By 2024, the Garden had expanded to two acres, hosting 80 10×10’ allotment plots, as well as becoming home to multiple partners and special projects.

In 2025 Lakeside took on stewardship of the former two-acre Loving Spoonful Training Farm located to the north of the existing space. This included various assets: a greenhouse, two hoop houses, a shed, market stall and a shipping container with solar power. 

We continue to explore how we, as a community garden, might continue to grow and cultivate thriving relationships among people, seeds, food, soil, water and all kin who live on this land. We ask what can we do to increase the amount of nutritious, affordable and culturally relevant food we grow in Kingston.

Funding

Lakeside Community Garden general operation costs (compost, tools, etc) are funded through membership fees.  

We are also grateful to:

  • City of Kingston Community Gardens Grant which contributes toward garden improvements including: accessibility improvements, seating and shade, water improvements and plants for the food forest
  • Gardening Kingston for supporting the start up costs of the Butterfly Garden, the Children’s Garden and the Little Seed and Garden Library
  • Reddendale Pharmacy for facilitating and funding the Medicinal Garden
  • KASSI (Kingston Area Seed System Initiative) for sharing seeds and seed saving knowledge
  • Little Forests Kingston for facilitating and funding the Little Forest
  • 1000 Islands Master Gardeners for facilitating workshops

Operations

Board of Directors

A volunteer Board of Directors (elected annually at an Annual General Meeting) runs Lakeside Community Garden.

  • Joyce Hostyn, Coordinator
  • Constance Cuthbert, Secretary & Membership Coordinator
  • Tom Martinek, Site Manager
  • Ivana Corsi, Treasurer
  • Amber Potter, Partner Manager
  • Anna Sadura Healey, Education Lead
  • Leeanne Rasmussen, Member at Large

A very special thanks to the many members (past and present) and volunteers that have made Lakeside a tremendous success.