Community Partners
Check out our amazing allies, sponsors, and co-collaborators, as well as other gardening initiatives on and around campus we've worked with!
Regenesis
Regenesis is a Canadian community environmental organization, with chapters on various universities in Ontario. They believe in empowering students as initiators of change in addressing today’s social and environmental concerns, through advocacy and service in local chapters and have been a wonderful supporter to Dig In's mission.
Since 2018, Regenesis UofT has adopted Dig In as an initiative and aims to help expand the work that is being done across the gardens at the St. George campus.
UTERN
The University of Toronto Environmental Resource Network (UTERN) has been a tremendous Dig In! sponsor. Aside from funding numerous gardening initiatives, UTERN hosts Environmental Working Group meetings which enable us to collaborate with the wider environmental community at U of T to work on environmental justice and advocacy projects.
Centre for Community Partnerships
The Centre for Community Partnerships creates opportunities for students to practice community engaged learning, and to build community both on and off campus. By organizing course placements and volunteer opportunities and setting up training, leadership development, and grants, CCP encourages students to enact their "vision of a better world".
CCP has been a critical sponsor and a remarkable co-collaborator over the past few years. Read more about CCP and the DigIn! project they sponsored here.
Hart House
Hart House has been a vital supporter of local food initiatives on campus. Since the group’s beginnings, Hart House has contributed to Dig In! in many ways – from staff and programming support to garden and event space. Dig In!’s work marries well with Hart House’s vision as a “living laboratory”. We encourage learning by doing and challenge expectations and norms with tangible, ‘rooted’ results.
Dig In! has also received funding through the Hart House Good Ideas Fund, a great resource for initiatives that enhance the student experience.
Centre for Environment
The Centre is the Faculty of Arts and Science environmental hub, offering undergraduate environmental, environmental science, and collaborative programs. The Centre’s Professional Experience Course has provided Dig In! with summer placement students in past years – a great partnership that has mutually beneficial results!
Hart House Farm
The Hart House Farm Committee is a group of students, staff, faculty and alumni that oversee the use and development of Hart House Farm, a 150-acre rural property located on the Niagara Escarpment. In partnership with Dig In!, the Committee used to maintain two garden plots at Hart House itself, along the western side of Queens Park Crescent. Unfortunately, those gardens were paved over a few years ago, but the Hart House Farm committee continues to use Hart House Farm to engage students around local food and sustainable agriculture. Garden plots, berry canes, and apple trees already exist on the property, providing a unique rural-urban experience for interested members of the UofT community.
Huron-Sussex Community garden
The Huron-Sussex Community Garden is run by residents from Huron-Sussex and nearby neighbourhoods. Located at the corner of Huron St. and Glen Morris, the garden is supported by a small annual membership fee, donations, and the University of Toronto. Their purpose is to build community and to promote urban agriculture. Dig In! collaborates with the HSCG by starting seedlings together in the Anthropology Greenhouse, and by organizing annual campus garden tours during
Kahonitake Kitikan U of T Medicine Garden
Kahonitake Kitikan, located at the east side of Hart House, is a medicine garden and sacred meeting space supported by the Native Student Association. Native plants, medicinal plants, and ceremonial herbs can all be found growing here
Sky Garden
Located on top of the Galbraith engineering building, the Sky Garden is a collaborative project between the UofT Urban Agriculture Society and the Food and Water Institute. The Sky Garden uses interconnected Biotop containers to create an amazing semi-hydroponic, self-watering rooftop growing system.
Trinity Rooftop Garden and Raised Beds
As part of Prof. John Robinson’s 4th year course ENV461, undergraduate and first year graduate student researchers submitted a preliminary garden design to Trinity College. This proposal borrowed from the Sky Garden design and was used to base a successful grant application in 2017 –$5,000 was won through the Chartwells Campus Project award to buy twenty Biotop containers. In 2018, generous donors helped expand the garden to eighty Biotops and establish a food systems summer internship for graduates of the TrinityONE Butterfield Environment & Sustainability first year program. That is, in addition to producing delicious local produce, the garden serves as a rich experiential learning opportunity and entrepreneurial outlet for students at various points in their studies.
Additional raised beds were constructed and managed by alumni of the Butterfield TrinONE Environment & Sustainability Stream, in partnership with the Trinity College Rooftop Garden.