SARAH MIHARA CREAGEN

Garden of Repairs
@gardenofrepairs

Location: 125 Barton St West, Hamilton, Ontario
Active spring 2023 – December 2025

The Garden of Repairs is a collaborative project with Zoe Hayes and the city of Hamilton, and community members to create an active public bioremediation garden project on unused city land. As a group that currently includes Queer and/or Disabled artists, settler and mixed-race gardeners and city dwellers we hope to explore our relationship to the land through these lenses. Over the last 18 months, through this active public bioremediation garden project we have curated and supported 7 Garden Artists-in-Residences, offered free public walks and programming with artists, activists, landworkers, birders. Throughout 2024/2025 we plan to continue involving many folks working in different spheres of nature and land work, and offering environmental arts and educational opportunities to Hamilton’s communities.

Bioremediation is the process of working in collaboration with plants (phytoremediation), mushrooms (mycoremediation) and bacteria (bacterial bioremediation) to heal and decontaminate soil, water and land. This garden is a living demonstration of the possibility of soil remediation from contaminants found in our city’s soil. It’s also a portal through which to explore what it means to remediate relationship to land in an urban context in which the ecosystem has been repeatedly damaged by industrialization and colonization of this land. It is an exploration of the spaces that have been left abandoned, impacted and exploited by industry, and for both Zoe and myself, this project is about renewal and recovery. 

The history and impact of industry, technology, and colonization have created these long lasting issues and “forever chemicals” in the land, and it’s touched me that an effective mode of repair can be something as slow and direct as a plant growing.

This project is supported through a Hamilton Placemaking Grant, a Hamilton Enrichment Fund Grant, and the Ontario Arts Council.