Proposed: Edmonds Gathering Garden
Background
FLEET: Edmonds was a mobile studio space installed in Edmonds Park from May 2024 through September 2025. Created by Other Sights for Artists’ Projects and a team of artists and professionals, it provided an adaptable space for artists or groups to create connections between artmaking and community engagement.
Proposal
Jennifer Lim and Sofia Alcántara, members of Edmonds-area grassroots organization Alegría Soy, submitted a proposal in early 2024 to create a roughly 10’x10’ “Gathering Garden” outside and adjacent to the FLEET studio. Partners included an Indigenous knowledge-carrier, Other Sites, and the City of Burnaby Public Art team.
Through a process of relationship-building and collaboration, the project’s aim was to uplift Indigenous self-determination and land stewardship while enhancing a sense of belonging among Edmonds’ immigrant and newcomer communities. Encouraging Edmond-area youth to take on leadership roles would have built competencies around land and food sovereignty, ethnobotany, grassroots activism, trauma-informed care, universal design, and gardening and seed collecting.
The team proposed that the garden installation be kept in place after FLEET: Edmonds concluded so it could continue to serve as a gathering spot for the community. It could have also served as an inspiration for the City of Burnaby’s future community gardens, and anchored a future expansion of the garden at Edmonds Park.
Design Principles: Repair, Rewild, Rematriate
Elements for consideration included:
A design to facilitate gathering, exploration, teaching, care and collaboration
Apply universal design principles so guests of all ages and abilities can access seats and plantings
Multi-level garden boxes for plants that can support humans and other-than-human beings (low-level for animals and insects, mid-level for humans, high-level for birds), and a variety of plantings such as berry bushes, vegetables, and other year-round crops
Seats with hidden/lockable/waterproof storage for garden tools
An flexibility and interpretation so the site could invite response and collaboration from FLEET resident artists
Water collection mechanism for practical reasons and to demonstrate consideration for the elements
Partial shade for the seated area
Public programs located in and centered around the garden to enhance the community’s awareness of the project and its aims. Discussions would revolve around native and naturalized plants as they relate to issues such as environmental justice, food sovereignty, land sovereignty, ethnobotany, art-making, mutuality, and more.
Design Jam
Following initial project approval, Alegría Soy coordinated a Design Jam with FLEET build project manager Annabel Vaughan. We reached out to our partners at Byrne Creek Community School, Stride Avenue Community School, the Edmonds Youth Education Centre, the Burnaby School District and the Burnaby District Student Advisory Council to invite local area Indigenous and immigrant/newcomer youth to participate. Over the course of a four hour session at the Burnaby Art Gallery, 20 youths participated in a design jam with two components—a collage-making session followed by model-making. Based on these ideas, Annabel then created a proposed design which was presented back to the participants for review.
Photos of the design jam outcomes are below (slides courtesy of Annabel).
Postscript
While this project was ultimately not realized due to constraints by the City of Burnaby’s Parks Department, Annabel has nonetheless released the design into the public domain. Feel free to use these plans as the basis for your garden design, but be sure to work with a local designer to adapt the plans to your site and ensure compliance to code and local bylaws if it will be constructed in the public realm.
Kindly attach the following credit to any future project that derives from ours: “Design courtesy of Alegría Soy, City of Burnaby Public Art, Other Sights for Artists’ Projects and FLEET mobile art studio.”
Many thanks to our collaborators Allison Collins, Jay Pahre, Annabel Vaughan, Kanatiio Allen Gabriel and Shayla Chalifoux.
Feel free to reach out if you would like to collaborate on an offshoot idea, or if you have questions about how the project unfolded.