Garden of Resilience
24 May - October 2026
Organized by KWAG Curatorial + Public Programs Departments
Located in the Sculpture Garden, KWAG’s Garden of Resilience is designed to empower local residents by providing individual beds for growing organic produce, flowers and herbs.
As a model, it is a decolonial gesture that inverts capitalist expectations of land value and outdated conceptions of aesthetic value and landscaping. As a gallery, the garden will be regularly programmed, activated and cared for, just like our internal gallery spaces. KWAG seeks to learn from the garden and understand how we can best position ourselves to care for our immediate neighbors and local ecologies.
This hybrid platform explores the model of the community garden as a space of radical sustainability and mutual aid on a community level. In a place where 10% of our neighbor’s face food insecurity on an annual basis, the Garden of Resilience will be a refuge of direct action, grounding the possibilities of small-scale, urban food production and community strength through intergenerational exchange and learning.
Gardener-in-Residence Program
We are thrilled to announce the return of the Gardener-in-Residence program for a second year. In exchange for a generous artist fee, a local artist will take over one of the garden plots for the season. Alongside their plot, the selected artist will host a series of workshops on the general theme of ecological sustainability and/or food security. We will be accepting applications in April 2026.
If you would like more information on this program and opportunities to get involved, please message garden@kwag.on.ca.
RELATED PROGRAMS:
Garden Launch and Celebration
Saturday, 24 May, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Announcement of 2026 Gardener-in-Residence at 11:00 a.m.
The Art of Soil Collective Workshop with Karen Houle
Sunday, 24 May
12:00 to 2:00 p.m., $20 + HST, Ages 18+
Gardener-in-Residence Workshop Series
To be announced in May 2026.
Images: Feature and header, 50/50 Garden of Resilience, 2025. Photo by KWAG.
The 50/50 Garden of Resilience is funded by the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation and WRCF’s Community Grants program.
