Nour Abusaman had a bit of a hard time adjusting to the absence of a yard when she moved to Canada two years ago. Back in Palestine, her family home had enough space for a bountiful garden.
Seated on her living room couch, head wrapped in a scarf, the lively young mom rattles off a list of things they grew.
"Palm trees, lemons, oranges, all fruits, vegetables, olives," she says. "We have a fridge full of tomatoes, cucumbers - everything."
Now, she has a bare balcony at the back of her Burnaby apartment, where she lives with her husband and two children.
"This is very hard," she says. "I always ask him: Why are we here?" she adds, laughing.
There is, however, one thing on her balcony: a set of threetiered cedar boxes full of fresh, black earth.
The container garden is part of the Biggest Little Garden in Town, a popular New Westminster food-growing program that has recently spread to Burnaby.
Apartment dwellers get a ready-made kit with three staggered cedar boxes with a lattice up the back, soil, plants, tools, seeds, a guidebook and a watering can.
The boxes are made by Creaft Custom Woodworking, a Burnaby-based company that builds fine furniture.
Anyone with limited access to land can participate in the Biggest Little Garden in Town. The gardens costs $175 each, and low-income people can get the kit for free.
Abusaman first heard of program through MOSAIC's Newcomers Centre for Children and Families, a place where refugees can get help with their kids.
Fraserside Community Services Society started the program in 2007, and according to the non-profit group, the first season was an immediate success.
The idea was to get people to grow their own food in urban areas so they would have fresh, local produce.
The program even attracted attention in the U.S., and the Los Angeles Times featured the project in its home section. Fraserside was fielding inquiries from afar from people interested in the program, some wanting to start their own Biggest Little Garden in Town.
After the program grew in New Westminster, Fraserside brought the Biggest Little Garden in Town to Burnaby, and the garden kits have been going fast. Fraserside offered up 40 in Burnaby; 20 are already spoken for, but the other 20 are still available.
With a proud smile, Abusaman says she was the first in Burnaby to sign up. Now she is waiting for her seeds to sprout and hopes she can make her family salads, fresh from the garden.
"You just plant the seed and hope it grows up," she says.
It may be a far cry from her garden in Palestine, but the container garden offers a bit of food security.
"I know what I plant. I know what I have, and I will not pay money. This is what I have," she says.
