Stink raised in Surrey over sustainable garden

恋恋风尘

Jess Thompson and Cindy Quach stand in their Surrey yard Monday with their children Nikola, 2, and Roial, 4 months. The couple are setting up a permaculture garden on their rented property, eliciting several complaints that the garden is unsightly. Photograph by: Ward Perrin, PNG

A Surrey family’s plan to grow all their own food in a unique type of raised-bed gardens in their one-acre yard is in danger of being deep-sixed even before it gets off the ground.
But the city of Surrey says their plan might not be buried if they agree to turn their mountains into molehills.
Jess Thompson and Cindy Quach have transformed the Fleetwood property they rent into an environmentally sustainable garden they say is designed to require very little maintenance and even watering.
But some neighbours are calling the shoulder-high mounds of wood chips they use to grow vegetables for themselves and two young boys an eyesore that would attract rats and flies and smell up the neighbourhood.
A Surrey bylaw enforcement officer sided with the neighbours, sending a letter to the couple’s supportive landlord of the six-lot acreage in the 8300 block of 168 Street, advising him that the piles of bark mulch and manure on his property were in violation of a bylaw that prohibits a yard from being “unsightly.”
Thompson said the city fell back on a vague bylaw about tidiness because they’re not breaking any other bylaws.
The couple trucked in the bark mulch this summer and arranged it in orderly mounds and will plant the mounds using a technique called permaculture or hugelkultur, which requires minimal fertilizer, tilling, weeding or watering.
They expect to harvest enough vegetables to supply the family, which makes all of its food from scratch, with 90 per cent of their food.
“By growing vertically, you get more growing space,” said Thompson.
They have verbal assurances from a B.C. environment ministry official that the garden doesn’t violate any environmental rules and a letter from a Fraser Health officer saying the same.
And they say the woodchips keep out the deadly hogweed and invasive blackberries that grew there before.
They say the city’s crackdown runs counter to its encouragements for citizens to reduce their environmental footprint and live a more green lifestyle.
Thompson said they’ve collected signatures from 88 supportive neighbours and say only eight are opposed. They complained during the summer when the manure they mixed in with the chips could be smelled in the area for about two weeks, he said.
But Jerry Filewich, who lives next door and who signed a letter with 10 others who want the city to shut the garden down, said the garden smells, attracts rats, will drive down property values and is “unsightly.”
“I look out the window and I have to see that crap,” he said. “It’s not a garden, it’s bull----. This is not the place to have a farm.”
Pari Anvari, who lives two doors down, said she wanted to support the couple, despite her husband’s opposition, because they’re nice people, but “there was a very garbage-y smell. We had a bad summer.”
But Joanne Ironside said she supported the garden because it looks “natural” and said there are derilect homes in the area that should be targeted as unsightly before the garden is.
Neighbour Abhi Chaudhry said he signed a petition to support the couple because, “that’s their land and they should be able to do what they want. They are using the land very well.”
He dismissed others who complained about the smell because he said Cloverdale is overrun with farm smells. But he did worry about the fruit trees attracting flies and wasps.
City bylaw manager Jas Rehal said the file is “still active” and he hopes talks with the owner can come up with a solution.
But he said the city has received about a dozen complaints and the garden can’t be allowed to remain, “not as it is.”
“It’s not the use of the woodchips, it the amount of woodchips,” he said, and a solution might be to reduce the height of the raised beds.
“The city fully supports organic gardening but it has to be done in a suitable way for a residential neighbourhood.”
The couple said their request to meet with council has been refused and they’re considering hiring a lawyer.


Jess Thompson tends to his garden in his Surrey yard. Thompson has setup a permaculture garden on the rented property. Eight area residents have complained that the garden is "unsightly".

Photograph by: Ward Perrin, PNG

By Susan Lazaruk, The Province October 1, 2013