Rewilding Urban Backyards

Growing food forests in Toronto's Humber River Valley

I live beside a cemetery. A really old cemetery. There are headstones dating back to the 1800s. Some people would be freaked out about that, but it’s never really bothered me. The backyard is long and there’s lots of privacy. It’s a beautiful cemetery, with hundred year old trees and a big loop to walk. Many residents stroll through.

Our backyard looks out over this cemetery, and in the centre there is a kidney shaped pool that was dug in the 1970s. Every spring, a mated pair of ducks always comes to visit. They muck about until its time to open the old pool. The landlord describes how as a child, before there were fences, wild turkeys used to run through this backyard.

This area was once a meadow, a long stretch of wild that ran from the Etobicoke Creek to the Humber River. Our neighbourhood sits high enough that we survived Hurricane Hazel and the swelling of the banks that washed entire houses in the area away. Hurricane Hazel was a catastrophe for the communities that lived in Weston, and for the trees. Many of our ancient trees were lost at that time.

Photo Credit: The effects of Hazel on Toronto Communities

The surviving trees hold so much life, it is astounding. There is a family of red breasted hawks that live in a neighbour’s tall pine. They circle overhead while I garden, looking to catch a squirrel or rabbit off guard. We have seen coyote in our backyard, chasing chipmunk in my doomed heugelkultur piles.

My daughter (who has an obsession with foxes) has been surprised by fox twice.

A neighbour was shocked when one afternoon he lazily walked into his backyard to find a river otter taking a quick dip in his pool.

There is so much wildlife. White cranes, ducks, geese, seagulls; and then, the song birds. Robins and cardinals and blue jays and goldfinch and sparrows, to name a few.

I have been observing. For eight years, I have been observing this backyard, allowing it to go wild, planting in permaculture guilds and slowly introducing vegetable and fruit trees, comfrey and ground cover. When I arrived the soil was dead and dry, a bleached white clay. Today, I am planting in living organic soil.

I spray biodynamic fertilizers and build layers of soil with cardboard and mulch. This year, I received a gift of wood chips from my neighbour (yes, river otter neighbour), whose hundred year old tree needed a haircut. The arborist was kind enough to drop a large pile of chips to my driveway. In this way, the ecosystem stays intact.

The first tenet of permaculture is to observe, ideally for seven years. Observe how the sun hits your garden. Observe what changes, what plants come and go. Observe how nature expresses itself. I never thought I would have eight years to observe, but time has flown by and we are still mucking about on this little street by the Humber.

What I have observed is how quickly invasive plant species will completely choke out all other life, and what a problem it is along the Humber.

Dog Strangling vine. Bellflower. Gout weed.

Ah, gout weed. Allowing this backyard to go wild, my one criteria was that the plants growing be edible. In the beginning, I accepted the gout weed as it is a part of the carrot family and edible. It was introduced to Ontario in the 1800s from Europe, but it is now listed as one of the worst offenders on the Ontario Invasive Plant Species website. The plant’s resiliency to grow in any soil is matched by its annoying rhizome root system. It spreads long carrot-like white fingers through the ground, and will re-grow from the tiniest piece of broken root. Its prolific blooms are loved by pollinators and insects, and the leaves, blooms and seeds have many medicinal qualities. Known as Bishop’s Weed, Ground Elder, Herb Gerrard, it was a common plant in monks’ gardens in Europe to help treat rheumatoid arthritis, gout and high-acidity in kidney and bladder systems exacerbated by rich diets.

Because it was edible, in the first years of observation, I allowed it to spread. Eventually, I couldn’t observe anymore and got my hands in the earth, aerating and tilling about. The more I dug, the more it spread. By year four, I decided I had to do something about it. I sprayed Pfeiffers Biodynamic Field and Spray mix, BD 500 (horn manure), chopped and dropped, and covered the bed with an old wood door that we had kicking around. On top of the door, I layered cardboard and leaves.

I left the bed for a full season to allow the gout weed to compost beneath the door. All of year five. In year six, I pulled up the door and saw that it was certainly less vibrant, but it was still there. I weeded…and weeded….and weeded. I was able to carve out a small swathe of good soil. I planted onions, leeks, and pepper plants. I bordered the area with Jerusalem Artichoke, cucumber, a blackberry bush and strawberries for ground cover.

Overall, in year seven I harvested two onions, three cucumbers and a single leek from this bed. The peppers were devoured by squirrels before we had a chance to munch. The gout weed’s unmatched resiliency choked everything else out.

And so, here we are in year eight. I have to accept that it will always be a part of the ecosystem of my back yard, but I want to grow some serious food. With grocery prices the way they are, I want to close the gap towards self-sufficiency. In an attempt to get some actual yield, I have installed raised beds that I will cage to protect from squirrels, birds and bunnies. To prepare the bed, I again chop and dropped, covered with cardboard and mulch, and secured a raised bed on top. The gout weed is still running along the neighbour’s side of the fence, and unless we completely smother it with some sort of chemical and plastic (which I don’t want), I have to make peace with it in the garden and use it. The young, translucent shoots are supposedly delicious in salads. Slightly older leaves can be cooked like spinach and added to omelettes or stewed. Its taste is described like “sweet parsley”. This is the year we use what we have.

Releasing control and working with the species that thrive in my garden has been one of the greatest lessons I’ve gleaned from eight years of rewilding a Humber River backyard. That, and never, ever, plant gout weed in your garden without a container.

Here’s a video of me working to cover the gout weed and install a raised bed:

Until next week…