One day, when Kolade Boboye was eight years old, a friend asked him to join her at a community garden. He wasn’t sure gardening was his thing. “What eight year old knows they like gardening,” he says with his broad smile. His friend was convincing, so he went along and soon realized it wasn’t just about gardening. “It was a chance to meet people, so I signed up,” he remembers, “and ever since then I have stuck around.” Fifteen years later, Boboye is the Director of Social Business and Innovation at Hope Blooms, a non-profit organization in Halifax’s North End that engages neighbourhood youth as change agents in their community. 

Boboye guides us through the expansive garden that slopes down toward Brunswick Street, between rows of tomato plants, squash plants full of big orange blossoms and bean plants that reach for the sky. Hope Blooms started as a community garden project nearly twenty years ago when Jessie Jollymore, a community dietitian, noticed four abandoned garden beds in Murray Warrington Park. “She had an epiphany to grow food,” Boboye explains, “She wasn’t sure at the time what that would look like but she started an after-school garden program. She really wanted to engage neighbourhood kids. And it was also a way to tackle food security. This area was a food desert,” Boboye says. “The nearest grocery story then was two kilometres away.”

Enterprising youth

As more youth got involved, their ideas began to shape Hope Blooms and it grew to include several social enterprises where youth learn, hands-on, how to create, build and sustain a social business. Possibili-teas is one such enterprise, where youth partner with Senegalese single mother farmers who grow hibiscus. They purchase the hibiscus and create herbal teas, selling their teas to raise funds for food gardens in other equity deserving communities in the province.

Hot Cocoa Boys, another long-standing social enterprise at Hope Blooms, began as a summertime lemonade business. When the weather cooled the boys switched to hot cocoa and soon found a growing demand. They sell their hot cocoa products at farm markets and partner with Atlantic Superstores throughout Nova Scotia to raise funds for social programs such as the new basketball court across the street. They are currently saving up to install a portable music studio at Hope Blooms. Most recently, three youth started Oh My Jewels, a social enterprise that brings together their Indigenous, Syrian, and African cultures through beading. They raise funds for youth to participate in leadership camps.

The longest running social enterprise, Fresh Herb Dressings, led to a pivotal moment for Hope Blooms. “I was ten at the time,” Boboye says, “and myself and four or five other youth would go to the Seaport Market with Jessie to sell our dressings.” They were soon selling out by noon and someone suggested they go on Dragon’s Den. It began with a local audition and culminated with Boboye and five other youth members pitching Fresh Herb Dressings on Dragon’s Den. “We worked on our script and our presentation and went to Toronto,” he tells us. They were asking for a $10,000 loan to build a year-round greenhouse. “They gave us $40,000 to build the greenhouse!” Boboye says, as excited as if it had just happened.

Innovative youth

That was ten years ago. The greenhouse project started off modestly. With the support of Build Right Nova Scotia, the Hope Blooms team designed and built an innovative, and beautiful, growing space—a long building on the lower corner of the park with large windows and solar panels along its south-facing roof. Inside, past solar batteries, garlic hangs from the rafters, ginger sprouts in a raised bed, and greens emerge from vertical growing units. “Dragon’s Den put us on a pedestal,” Boboye explains, “and Build Right Nova Scotia reached out. They loved our story and they worked with us to build this greenhouse.” Build Right contractors and tradespeople contributed supplies and labour but it was the participation of Hope Blooms youth that sets this project apart. Boboye was on the design team and the experience sparked his interest in architecture. He points to the large bricks of the back wall that act as heat incubators, just as the bubbles in the windows do. “When it cools, the heat is released,” he explains. The floor beneath us is six feet of gravel to help with drainage and in the back corner, koi fish swim in an aquaponic growing system.

In addition to the greenhouse, Hope Blooms now has farm space at a farm in Broad Cove. This space has increased Hope Blooms’ growing capacity so they can grow more tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, eggplants and other vegetables for their weekly Thursday market and for their Hope Blooms culinary programs. The farm also provides more opportunity for youth to explore and participate in food production from the ground up. 

Boboye leads us back outside, through the garden where Ali El-Beshbeeshy is watering tall plants along the raised border of the garden. El-Beshbeeshy started at Hope Blooms when he was young, as a Hot Cocoa Boy as well. He’s now a second-year engineering student at Dalhousie University and a youth leader here at Hope Blooms. Hope Blooms provides scholarships to its youth through its Fresh Herb Dressings social enterprise. These scholarships add up to $250,000 to date as they support 13 youth in their post-secondary or other educational journeys. Boboye himself is a Hope Blooms scholarship alumnus and studied marketing and philosophy at Antigonish’s St. Francis Xavier University.

Cooking up change

He takes us inside the main building—the Global Kitchen for Social Change—where long tables and comfortable seating invite people to sit down and chat. Jessie Jollymore is sitting with a friend at a long table below a towering moss wall. She greets us with her warm hello and a sparkle in her eyes. The space is filling with teens and excited conversation. Hope Blooms runs several summer camps and this week is culinary camp. The teens are donning aprons and gathering around the island in the large open concept commercial kitchen. Natasha Jollymore—or Chef Tash, the Manager of Food Programs—is walking the group through what they will be preparing in the kitchen today. “Chef Tash is also the mastermind behind all of the social enterprise recipes,” Boboye tells us.

When everyone settles into their food prep work, Dave snaps some photos and campers tell him what they are making today. He hands his camera to Alejandro, one of the campers, who eagerly asks for instruction and sets off to take photos of his friends. The curiosity and enthusiasm in this building are palpable.

After a few more snaps, Alejandro hands the camera back and heads into the kitchen and Boboye takes us to the courtyard. This courtyard comes to life Thursday evenings as vendors set up, musicians play, and neighbours come to pick up fresh and prepared foods and, perhaps most importantly, be social. “The market is like a mini-festival,” Boboye says. The market started during the pandemic when the Hope Blooms team created up to 180 food boxes every week for community families. To improve food accessibility, Hope Blooms helps subsidize some of the food costs by partnering with vendors, and this year Boboye has created an app to help community members use and save their market dollars. “The Hope Blooms Market Point is like a localized economy,” he explains, “and people are down to pay for market food because they see the value and their financial literacy skills also grow.” 

Just below the courtyard, beside the blueberry patch, Maziah Clayton is taking a break at a solar picnic table. Hope Blooms has installed four of these off-grid workstations on their grounds to provide community members a place to charge up, to connect to wifi, and to sit and chat. “Families that live here can sit here in the evening and charge their devices and use the wifi,” Boboye says.

Clayton is one of the founding members of Hot Cocoa Boys. He  joined Hope Blooms seven years ago. He’s in grade 11 now and, as a youth leader, trains younger boys how to market their hot cocoa products, and how to be community leaders. Clayton is also part of the new music camp. Boboye and a few alumni started a mobile recording studio which partners with this camp to help grow music and recording skills. “I started making beats, learning from my brother,” Clayton explains, “and now I’m recording.”

Agents of creativity

In their pitch to Dragon’s Den, one of the youth team, Tiffany, said, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” 

The Hope Blooms community has transformed a grassy, neglected corner in Halifax’s North End into a truly blossoming space to grow and collaborate, cook and create. “I’ve worked in other places,” Boboye says, “but I think we excel here at creativity and adaptability. We aim high.”

Boboye tells us they’ve had requests to franchise but points out it’s not so simple. Every neighbourhood is unique—with its own set of challenges and its own needs. Each garden, so to speak, will grow a little differently. 

It is impossible to leave this place uninspired. We are buoyed by the energy here and truly feel hopeful. While this approach might look a little different in every community, what a better place the world would be with more Hope Blooms.  🫛

Hope Blooms

hopeblooms.ca

This article appeared in edible Maritimes, No 8, Fall 2023