About Us
Jane Hayes, Director
Jane is a gardener, educator and artist with fifteen years of experience developing and leading garden educational programs. She established the City of Toronto Children's Garden Program and High Park Children's Garden site in 1998. The award-winning program still reaches thousands every year and has expanded to include 22 sites. Jane also worked with FoodShare and the City of Toronto's Community Garden program, helping launch the Community Garden Network in the late 90's. In 2001, Jane went to Oregon where she worked with Food Not Lawns and co-directed Circus Discordia, an amateur circus and fundraiser. In 2003, Jane returned to Ontario and joined Evergreen, helping to establish food gardening in schools and communities across Canada. Jane holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Environmental Studies (U of T), a Masters in Environmental Studies (York U) and certificates in Permaculture Design and Teaching Permaculture. She founded Garden Jane in 2007 as well as Cirque Dirt, with the hopes of building economy and community around deep gardening.
Interns and Intern Graduates
Interns are an integral part of Garden Jane. They help garden as well as research, develop and deliver high quality resources and programs. All interns develop a plan of study, which outlines their learning goals and our approaches to meeting them. We evaluate their progress as they go in regular meetings. Interns typically do some focused work in each of the following: gardening; community (development / program delivery); arts / expression; theory, history, environmental context; personal permaculture; community permaculture; evaluation. Interns have a chance to create meaningful and sustainable livelihoods in a sector that has been small, but is growing rapidly.
Jake Bennett developed his gardening skills while working as an assistant for a very experienced Serbian gardener in Montreal. After helping a friend to set up his own small landscaping company "Les jardiniers à bicyclette" in Montreal, Jake is now in Toronto working as an intern for Garden Jane and learning much about permaculture and urban agriculture.
Leslie Cauchi is branching off from her background in urban forestry research to experiment in permaculture. She hopes to green her "brown thumb" and design high yield container gardens for urban growers. She's also sharing her considerable culinary talents with the Garden Jane nutrition team.
Tamara Green gardened for a season with us, co-developed and led new Garden Jane programs in the HOPE Community Garden last spring and helped deliver a program for kids touched by cancer in April. Tamara just started her own business, The Living Kitchen, after pursuing more studies at the Institute for Holistic Nutrition. She works with the nutrition team.
Joanna Jack completed a year internship and is continuing work on guilds. Her focus is on fruit hedgerows to feed birds.
Rachel Masters brings her nutrition background to work on the Bean Keepers program, as well as an interest in educating kids about how to create and access healthy food and food systems. Rachel is delivering after school cooking programs to youth and starting to co-lead workshops for Garden Jane.
Holly McLellan is continuing the work she started as an intern in 2006-7, developing an ecoliteracy program for schools in Scarborough with funding from Frontier College. Holly is also a relatively new mom.
Nathan Payne graduated with a degree in Food and Nutrition and volunteers his health promotion skills along with contributing to community gardening efforts. He enjoys all aspects of food production and continues to grow in the field visual arts. Nathan is currently taking the Physical Activity Assessment and Promotion certificate through Ryerson.
Candice O'Grady joins us from New York City. She is using her journalism skills to help develop articles and resources on kids and permaculture gardening, diversity gardening and conflict resolution in gardens. Ask us for her latest article, published in Interaction, a publication of the Canadian Child Care Federation.
Marsha Ostrovsky is rediscovering her love of worms, growing things, and healthy eating. She joins us to develop resources and programs on local tree guilds, garden yoga and as part of the Cirque Dirt troupe. This spring and summer she will help to lead Garden Jane workshops, some of which will integrate her holistic approach to teaching yoga. She will explore another passion of hers, writing, through regular updates on the world of urban agriculture and permaculture on the Garden Jane facebook page.
Emma Rooney has been with Garden Jane for a couple of years focusing on horticultural therapy and kids gardening. She led the first Garden Jane program for kids touched by cancer last year, and co-developed and led March Break programs in the Hope Community Garden. Emma is currently Project Coordinator at Greenest City for a new youth food program. Last year Emma worked as the City of Toronto's Children's Garden Expansion Assistant. She is also coordinating horticultural therapy workshops, is leading Garden Jane's health promotion tours this season and writes a blog.
Blythe Weber completed a year with Garden Jane and has stayed in touch to explore collaboration opportunities. She recently launched her new home food gardening business, Growing Spaces. She is farming and selling preserves at Dufferin Grove. We're collaborating on a new farm workshop weekend later this year.
Lana Winkler is a visual artist who aims to incorporate sculpture into permaculture garden environments. She brings her background in art and public relations to help illustrate and promote Garden Jane and Cirque Dirt. You can see her work in several Garden Jane handouts.
To discuss internship opportunities, contact us.
Other Workshop Leaders
Courtney Raponi
Courtney is a clinical herbalist with experience as a practitioner, educator and researcher. As a practitioner, she incorporates herbs, nutrition and lifestyle counselling to facilitate the healing process. She has facilitated various community workshops on the importance of wild plants to diet and health in Toronto, Jamaica and Belize. Courtney is involved in research and educational initiatives that look at local plants with both edible and medicinal applications that can be drawn on to improve food security and health simultaneously. She has a B.Sc in Public Health and Safety and is a certified Public Health Inspector.
Volunteers and supporters
Many students, volunteers and friends volunteer to help gardens and community garden education grow. Thanks to Greg Elliot for our fantastic new logo and to Karoush Javidi for amazing photos we're using in handouts. Thanks to Courtney Raponi for her help with guilds and medicinal plants research. . Thanks to all the many gardeners who have helped make the gardens wonderful. Thanks also to David Powell, Anne Shaddick, Carrie Ann Watson, Ian Jarvie, Diana Teale, Diane Wolfe, Lisa Spinks, Laurel Waterman, Lucie Dufault, Katrina Simmons, Harriet Friedmann, Karimah Gheddai, Jerome Godboo, Munju Ravindra, Frank Iacobucci, Linda Hayes, Yozajandi Hernandez, Manfred Humphries, Maria Liu, Zoe Ludski, Yussin Ramos, Rene Morrison and so many others for their contributions to promoting and supporting the good work.
Advisors and influences
Garden Jane draws inspiration and advice from nature, along with these wonderful people, some of whom are current clients or collaborators: Lauren Baker; Solomon Boye; Heather Coburn Flores and Food Not Lawns; Debbie Field and FoodShare friends; the Evergreen team; Keely Forth; Johanna Beyers; Jerome Godboo and his band; Jesse Hayes; Linda Hayes; Richard Hayes; Toby Hemenway; Jude Hobbs; Jillian Hovey and the Sustainable Living Network; Elaine Ingham and Soilfoodweb; Beth Knox; Collette Murphy and Urban Harvest; Munju Ravindra and Ideas Unlimited; Wayne Roberts and the Toronto Food Policy Council; Yafit Rokach; Susan Richardson; Caroline Scotchmer, Paul Stamets; Seeds of Diversity and Bob Wildfong; Alvero, Rodrigo and Plan B Organic Farm, Monika and Greenfields, Ted Thorpe and the many other farmers and farms feeding people in the Toronto area.
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