- Giving purchasing power to tenants and bringing them together is the objective of the urban vegetable garden created in full confinement by the main social landlord in Toulouse.
- Pick-up time has come for the 182 residents of the Polygone residence.
- After having overcome boredom by watching the vegetables grow, most of them enjoy themselves.
"In the end, it made us pass the time. We watched, sometimes sitting on a bench, what was growing ”, in this case flowers and vegetables. To hear them, Madeleine and Paule, venerable inhabitants of an HLM very close to the Zenith of Toulouse, lived a rather contemplative confinement. Almost a green. A small change of scenery provided by the brand new vegetable garden of the Polygone residence which has - and will always keep - the immense particularity of having been planted in mid-April, when nothing else was happening in the middle of the buildings.
And the tranquility has rather succeeded in this urban garden of 400 m2, very dense and flowery, where the Batavia has already disappeared, because the 182 tenants prefer it to chicory and have already used it. Because the principle of this vegetable garden, the third of its kind installed by the social landlord Toulouse Métropole Habitat is that of self-service and free.
"That taste when it comes from the garden!" "
Residents can pick whatever vegetables they want, cauliflower, soon peppers and zucchini or beans grown with a corn stalk as their stake. "I have already picked up a lot of spinach, I like that and usually I bought them at the covered market," says Madeleine, who this Thursday leaves with a plastic bag full of chard. "I'm waiting for the cherry tomatoes," announces Paul with greed. This taste when it comes from the garden! It really has nothing to do with it. ”
The other special feature of the vegetable patch is that the locals did not grow it themselves. He was also born on the fallow of a shared garden that did not work. There is a service provider, the Milpa company. Its co-founder, Guillaume Chochon, also maintains the 3,000 m2 of the residence. He planted the garden himself, uses water from an old well, precious in the city.
"It does not lead to an increase in charges," says Toulouse Métropole Habitat, since the price of the service has not changed. The atmosphere does. Guillaume warns of his visits for the inhabitants who have green thumbs and he has the pocket knife in his pocket to fill the baskets. In addition, it adorns everything with advice on biological control of parasites, such as marigolds to eat aphids. Not to mention the preparation tips for selling the famous pouted chicory. For the youngest, the nearby social center intends to organize horticultural activities.
Jacqueline, a 46-year-old resident, finds that "it's good" even if she hasn't picked anything yet, not knowing if she had the right to do so. She deplores the fact that the garden occupies the space where children used to play and hopes that it will not be "too quickly ransacked" ...
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Toulouse: Vegetables grown in the city, at the foot of social housing
- Live the city better
- Society
- Garden
- Food
- Toulouse
- HLM
- Confinement