What does it appear like to design a house and backyard round group? On this Q&A, we discover how one East Van gardener has executed precisely that.
There’s a home in East Van I’ve admired for years. Not due to its dimension or its magnificence, however due to a recreation of Jenga.
Out entrance, tucked beneath the road bushes, there’s a tiny patio with two chairs and a backyard pot filled with picket blocks. On it, a handwritten message inviting passersby to sit down down, calm down, and play a recreation. It’s easy, beneficiant, and quietly radical.
The primary time I noticed the home listed on a neighborhood gardening tour, I felt a jolt of pleasure. It meant I’d get to fulfill the proprietor of this fabulous home.
Her title is Karen Reed. After we met on the tour, I advised her how a lot I admired what she’d created. Not only a backyard however an area designed for connection.
Karen owns and lives in a six-bedroom group house the place each the home and the backyard are deliberately arrange for sharing. Each path, planting mattress, and sitting space displays that ethos. It’s a house constructed with group in thoughts.
Later, I had the possibility to interview Karen and {photograph} her backyard for my e-book, The Wild & Free Backyard. Our dialog was so wealthy and provoking that I couldn’t match all of it on the web page.
Right here you’ll discover extra of that dialog, filled with Karen’s recommendation and her story, in addition to pictures to assist encourage you too.
Stephanie: You’ve constructed your self fairly a group, indoors and outside. How does intentional group start to construct?
Karen: Somebody have to be the catalyst. After I first began, I knew my very own eager for a deeper expertise of group. I had lived alone an excellent quantity of my life, so I’d by no means lived in a group.
The Vancouver Basis did a research and located the primary problem within the metropolis is loneliness and isolation. It’s just about the case throughout the board in each city middle.
You might say hello to a few neighbours who know you by your title or go to a market and get acknowledged. This can be a sense of social capital and contributes to an individual’s well-being. We’re meant as people to attach and belong, and all people’s eager for it. It usually simply wants someone to be the initiator.
Stephanie: And the way did you begin being intentional about forming this group?
Karen: I’d sit on my porch within the morning and greet folks one after the other. I simply began to get to know the neighbours. I’d deliberately stroll in the identical space and have folks over for espresso.
Quite simple, unusual issues. I worth creating areas for folks to assemble, and so I don’t have a TV as a centerpiece. There’s a dialog pit the place you may speak face-to-face.
We’ve a follow the place nobody can convey their telephone to the desk at meals. There’s analysis that even if in case you have it on the desk, you received’t be capable of transfer into deeper conversations since you may very well be interrupted.
Deliberately bridge friendships and invite folks into your life as associates. I bear in mind my neighbours subsequent door had a hedger and mentioned I might borrow it. So, I deliberately didn’t purchase one. I don’t must have every little thing alone, so I don’t. It requires some vulnerability to obtain.
Stephanie: Inform me about soup nights. I do know that was one among your concepts to assist join your neighbours.
Karen: The primary soup night time I had was very low barrier. Folks didn’t must RSVP. They may come late, go away early, and convey anybody of their family. They didn’t must convey something. I simply made good soup.
The entire level is that as a result of it’s soup, it’s simple for them to simply accept. They don’t have to fret about it being a flowery sit-down meal, and so they can escape every time they need.
Folks have been so jazzed about it. I feel it gave folks a style of household. You see intergenerational, socioeconomic, and ethnic range, and it simply appears like a traditional human expertise.
After a 12 months, I hardly needed to do something. Everyone simply began pitching in. In that first 12 months, I feel I needed to win some belief. I had a number of folks come to the door saying, “I’ve simply come as a result of I wish to meet the lady who invitations strangers into her house.”
And I assumed, when did that turn into bizarre?
And so, it took an entire 12 months of constructing belief. There must be a willingness in your finish. That you simply provide it with no agenda, after which it takes a lifetime of its personal.
Stephanie: Initially, you advised me that you just had constructed a communal vegetable backyard out entrance. What else do you utilize your house for?
Karen: Sure, a small mattress. I initially constructed the mattress for my neighbours. And now I wish to rebuild one thing else that’s a little bit extra practical for the entrance house. I’d usually discover myself with further produce from my meals backyard that I’d put on the market free of charge.
Throughout COVID, there was a number of curiosity. At first, there was concern about meals safety points. So, I obtained a load of grime and some neighbours collectively to share seeds out on a desk. Folks might speak at a distance in the event that they needed to strive planting and rising some meals for the primary time.
I maintain a price that outside house can draw the center towards hope, and you need to give consideration to it as you’d your property. I select colors that aren’t overstimulating and provides consideration to the house as a spot to assemble, for hospitality, for meditation, relaxation, or solace. And I feel my backyard house displays that.
It’s an area that folks can collect. We are able to have events on the market. We are able to have small dinners. We play playing cards. I’ve had a film night time out right here in the midst of winter.
I’ve a few neighbours who don’t have any yard house. One was in a tough season, and he or she would simply come over a few instances every week via the again gate to sit down there and be within the backyard. And that simply helped get her via.
I’m not a finicky gardener. It’s not a manicured backyard. I maintain attempting to simplify it. However there’s something therapeutic about deadheading, about creating.
I feel that’s the one purpose they put my backyard on the tour. As a result of it’s not in regards to the crops right here; it’s extra about sparking inspiration and how one can create your individual house.
Stephanie: Would you say you carry the data of gardening to your communal home and group?
Karen: Sure. There’s one thing about getting your arms within the grime, seeing how issues develop, and having the ability to exit and decide your dinner. We’ve a group meal tonight, and we’re simply going to choose from the backyard.
I understand how transformative rising meals is. We’ve distanced ourselves from meals, and the way we view meals says quite a bit about our worth system. Meals is simply seen as gas. After which it turns into transactional. We’ve misplaced the connection.
So, we all the time say thanks at mealtimes. We use it as a second to push towards the delusion of self-sufficiency. That we’re depending on farmers, truckers, and market folks. And that life was forfeited to maintain us, both plant or animal. I feel there’s a sacredness to it.
After we do an enormous feast, I say we have to take an hour to eat this meal. As a result of while you’ve grown meals, and you then’ve executed sluggish cooking, you can’t eat this meal in fifteen minutes.
Even when we’ve got an abundance of meals obtainable to make use of, I feel all people ought to know how you can develop meals. Gardening connects you to dwelling issues and helps you perceive your house within the ecosystem.
Within the ecosystem, you’re a steward. There’s a humility in that I can not make a seed develop. I can kill it. I can shield it. I can feed it. However I can not make it develop. There’s a bigger power at work that’s past us, and locations us in the entire ecosystem of the world.
Thanks to Karen Reed for taking the time to share her story, ideas, backyard, and home with me. Her backyard, in addition to numerous others, is featured in The Wild & Free Backyard, which is obtainable for pre-order now and hits bookshelves February 24, 2026.