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The Community Edition @[email protected] · 2025-09-09 · 20:47 UTC

JUN-KAN PERMACULTURE IS ON A MISSION OF REPAIR

Just off Notre-Dame Rd. in Petersburg, Ontario is the Jun-kan Permaculture Garden. The garden sits on one of 20 acres in the Petersburg Community Garden, and volunteers tend permaculture food forests and annual vegetable terraces.

The garden was started in 2022 when the land’s owner, Daryl Dore decided he no longer wanted to rent his fields to cash-cropping commercial farmers. Dore contacted Doug Jones of the Waterloo Regional Community Garden Network and proposed that his land be available to individuals, especially new Canadians.

While the proposal was eagerly accepted, years of cash cropping and heavy pesticide use had left the soil damaged.

“In a word, this soil was dead. And poisoned,” Barbara Hankins, one of Jun-kan’s volunteers, said.

Permaculture gardening operates on the basis of symbiosis and diversity. A wide array of individual species are planted in cooperative guilds to work in concert with each other and the environment. Together, they thrive and improve the quality of the land they are growing on.

This is where the name Jun-kan comes from. The garden’s website explains, it is a Japanese word that translates roughly to “the universe,” or “the cycle of life”. In accordance with the principles of permaculture, Jun-kan’s first step was to plant swaths of five distinct cover crops: clover, alfalfa, buckwheat, field peas, and rye. Quickly, the earth began to heal and the gardeners started producing food, still with permaculture in mind.

“[We ask ourselves,] ‘what does the ground need? What do the plants need? How can I give to them because they are giving to me?’,” Hankins said.

In turn, the land gives back to its farmers, not just in food, but in a more existential way as well. This is especially helpful at Jun-kan, where many of the volunteers are new Canadians and do not own their own land. People are given the opportunity to form a relationship with the land they may not otherwise have been able to. This is crucial for a sense of belonging.

“This garden supports a huge diversity of growers from around the world, and it’s nourishing to see how the diversity of culturally relevant foods, approaches, skills, stories…the diversity enhances our resilience as a community of gardeners,” Nikola Barsoum, one of Jun-kan’s founding volunteers, said.

The ethos of repair and repurposing extends beyond physical gardening and the dignity of the volunteers as well. In 2023, ongoing war in Lebanon put Hankins’ family in danger, and here in KW, her house burned down. The garden provided the family with relief, repairing them in the wake of the tragedies. The bricks from their home were salvaged and used to cobble Jun-kan’s community fire pit.

“We went through so much that year. This was my therapy. Coming out here, and just being with the land, with the earth, with the butterflies, and feeding the insects and the birds… Watching things grow is very therapeutic,” Hankins said.

Restoring the land, offering a dignified community for newcomers and a sanctuary for its volunteers, Jun-Kan is on a mission of repair. For more information, the garden can be found on Instagram @junkanpermaculture, or on their website.

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#agriculture #barbarahankins #belonging #dougjones #gardening #junkan