Cultiville founder connects landless gardeners to people with land but no green thumb

Sophie Maslon grew up in Pointe-Claire, in Montreal's West Island, where her father's garden produced a bounty of lettuce, tomatoes and parsley, but it wasn't until last spring that she really dug her hands into the earth for the first time.

Maslon says she hasn't been the same person since. The trials and triumphs of growing her own food taught her patience and that it's OK to make mistakes.

A resident of Montreal's Plateau-Mont-Royal borough, she searched for a garden space close to home last year. But with waiting lists at community gardens as long as seven years in her borough, Maslon went searching on social media for alternatives farther afield.

Eventually, she found people in the Notre-Dame-de-Grce borough and Lacolle, near the Quebec-U.S. border, who were willing to offer her some space in their backyards.

That was when she decided to create Cultiville, an online platform to connect people who have land to spare with Montrealers who want to garden but don't have access to a plot of soil for free, a fee, or in exchange for share of the harvest or a helping hand.

"I realized that the traditional community garden route isn't that good," Maslon said. "So we decided that we needed something, a better way to do it."

More flexibility, no long waits

In February 2022, the city of Montreal announced a 10-year plan to invest $10 million in developing and renovating garden spaces.

A city spokesperson told CBC the current wait times for community garden space differ from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, with a lack of spaces for new gardens and delays caused by the pandemic contributing to the situation.

By using Cultiville, said Maslon, would-be gardeners won't be limited to finding a plot in their own neighbourhoods.

"It was one of the problems that I realized with the gardening community. The way that it's set up for garden-sharing right now is that there are a few nonprofit organizations across the city, but they're all restricted to their own neighbourhoods."

Cultiville launches on May 26, but people are already signing up.

"It seems like a lot of people are really excited for vegetables, over herbs and flowers. A lot of people are looking forward to trying tomatoes for the first time," Maslon said.

She is hoping Cultiville will take root and sprout across the city.

"Gardening is a way that can bring us together," she said. "The foundations of strong communities are built off of good food and strong connections between people."

'Good in theory'

Pascale Nycz, spokesperson for Cultiver Montral, an organization that supports and promotes urban agriculture, says the initiative is a "brilliant idea."

Montreal is seeing a growing demand for urban agriculture close to home, she said, but warns renting space from a private garden comes with its own issues.

Problems arise "if someone doesn't take care of the garden or at first will take care of it or decide that they go on vacation and forget to take care of it for multiple weeks or months," she said.

Some people withunused land will not be comfortable with having strangers in their backyards, Nycz said. She also said there is the serious question of who will be held responsible if an incident occurs on private land.

Those kinds of liability issues mean municipalities may in the end be better equipped with the resources and means of oversight, said Jean-Philippe Vermette, intervention and public policy director at Laboratoire d'agriculture urbaine.

Vermette said that Maslon's idea "good in theory" has proven difficult to put into practice elsewhere in North America where it's been tried.