A grand opening ribbon cutting ceremony has been held for the Carefor Community Gardens in Pembroke. City Councillor Brian Abdallah says the idea started in 2019 and thanks to a partnership with Carefor, funding from the province and County of Renfrew, the community garden project came to life.
Abdallah says the community gardens wouldn’t be possible without all the hard work of the volunteers.
The community garden is located at the bottom of the hill at the Carefor Mackay Centre in Pembroke. Sharon Maye, the director of operations at Carefor, says she has received nothing but positive feedback about the community gardens. She adds there are also a number of accessible garden beds near the Carefor building for residents to use and take advantage of.
MPP John Yakabuski says it’s great to see initiatives like this, adding a little bit of funding goes a long way.
The St. Joseph’s Food Bank has a couple of garden plots and fresh food that is grown is donated back to people in the community. Director of Operations René LaChapelle says the food bank will accept fresh vegetables that are grown from your home garden. He tells myFM the food bank in Pembroke helps about 200 people on a weekly basis and outreach crews work with roughly 1,300 people on a yearly basis, which means about one out of every ten people in Pembroke are using the food bank for a variety of reasons.
The grand opening ribbon cutting ceremony at the Carefor Community Gardens in Pembroke was held on Friday, July 15th. The Champlain Trail Museum in Pembroke also has a community garden and city councillors are considering the idea of opening a community garden in the west end of Pembroke.
(written by: Rudy Kadlec)
