Ploughing Ahead in 2026

S[no]w joke out there! Our e-bike is hiding in the office, and we can’t see any of our garden beds, even the tall ones! It’s always nice to rest a bit in January, but we’ve actually been pretty busy in classrooms, and distributing microgreens growing kits to a group of schools, thanks to the School Food Infrastructure Fund and Farm to Cafeteria Canada. Big thanks to all of our 2025 donors, supporters, volunteers and funders! Our 2025 Annual Report will be out in February. For now, we wanted to share some fun January news, and fill you in on cool stuff from the fall.

Welcome Philippe!

Hi, I’m Philippe, and I’m a student at the Community Worker program at George Brown College. I’m also an illustrator, and I’ll be helping out with arts programming at Green Thumbs! We met at Evergreen Brick Works in Spring 2025, and I’m really excited to be doing my student placement here.

and Best Wishes to Lincoln!

Lincoln Stone joined us for Co-op from Malvern Secondary, a grade 12 student with a passion for trees and food. We were grateful for Lincoln’s attention to detail, willingness to work and wickedly speedy completion of tasks. Thanks for the sweet potato air-fried chips, and saving Daniels Spectrum rooftop membrane! Best of luck Lincoln, you’ve got a bright future!

Winter Crops for Students

Aiden & Rebecca headed out to Scarborough this month to install light units for growing microgreens in schools. This new initiative is part of our School Food Infrastructure Fund promise, and we’re so pleased to be able to offer one of the favourite snacks we’ve learned that kids love, for indoor growing in schools that need more nutritious offerings (most do!) and whose Green Teams are excited to partner on! Great extension for math learning, too.

Back in the Fall we did some cool stuff

Thank you Ontario Trillium Foundation!

We want to give the Ontario Trillium Foundation a HUGE shout out and sincere thanks for the Capital Grant they awarded us in 2025. Thanks to their support, we were able to install a perimeter railing around our green roof farm, Green Thumbs UP, and for the first time we welcomed members of the public to enjoy this vibrant new green space.

As the weather warms, we’ll be offering a wide range of opportunities to connect with Toronto’s newest urban farm, including workshops, volunteer days, and harvest events.

Want to learn more about Green Thumbs UP? Stay tuned for our upcoming roof schedule and discover how you can get involved!

Eastdale CI gets compost unit

BIG THANKS to FoodShare Toronto, first for building the rooftop garden back in 2011, and then providing us with a 3-bin composter in December 2025! Left: Alanzo Byfield from FoodShare training students in the proper use of the essential tool needed to assemble the unit. Good Green Jobs await! Right: Green Thumbs crew helping to put it all together! Though we may not have been able to feel our fingers by the end of the day, it was a very successful build and we are excited to bring composting to the roof garden at Eastdale!

We then conducted a training with 7 staff who were all keen to know how and what to do, to create healthy soil from food scraps, wood chips and fall leaves! Due to Chef-Teacher Sean Meikle’s healthy lunches, made in part from garden produce from the rooftop, and his culinary skills shared with students, there’s plenty of food scraps to decompose!

That food waste will break down into amazing compost to go back out on the gardens to feed the soil and grow nutritious food to be brought into the kitchens again. May the circle be unbroken!

Save the date: Spring Will Be In the Air!!

April 26, 2026 will be our annual spring celebration, including a plant sale, music, silent auction and children’s activities, with support from Friends of Allan Gardens! If your business would like to sponsor the event, please be in touch! And by the way please sign this petition to expand the horticultural facility.

Thank you for your support!

Last year, our end of year peer to peer campaign was driven by community support. We had 9 team captains who were a mix of Green Thumbs team members and community supporters who helped raise funds from their families and friends. Together, they raised $8,681 with support from over 60 individual donors, showing how much people believe in this work.

Cabbage smashed their original goal of $1,000 as the team leader Rebecca incentivized her donors by promising to get a cabbage tattoo!

For our Giving Tuesday campaign, we were fortunate to have a generous anonymous donor support us with a $10,000 matching gift. Between your donations and that match, we raised $17,140 from November 28th to December 3rd. To everyone who shared our fundraiser and donated, thank you for making this possible.

That’s a total of $25,821 in December alone, in many small amounts! We are so grateful for your support, which will keep our gardens thriving in 2026 and beyond.