“My brother said to me: “The school and the garden saved you, huh?” I told him that without it, I wouldn’t be here to talk to him. »
After touring his magnificent garden, Marcel Bergeron and I found refuge in a snack bar. It’s cold, it’s raining and we fight this nap time with a filter coffee.
The 65-year-old man tells me what led him to create his “haven of peace”. He suffered the torments of alcoholism, proudly found sobriety at 35, immersed himself in university studies at 38, had a successful career in restaurants… Then COVID-19 came and turned everything upside down.
“Suddenly, I found myself doing nothing, but I’m a guy who has to be busy! »
Two weeks ago, I wrote to you about urban gardening and I mentioned the fact that several people got into it at the start of the pandemic. Well, here’s a face to put on the statistics.
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
It was to pass the time that Marcel Bergeron started cleaning his alley.
To relieve boredom, Marcel Bergeron decided to clean the alley adjoining the coop where he had lived for 25 years, in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district. Every day, he collected syringes, condoms and other waste giving an idea of the scale of the activities that took place there. Regularly, passers-by asked him if he also planned to plant flowers.
Pantoute. Marcel had never grown anything.
I spent the summer on all fours and when fall came, I said to myself: “Okay, okay. I could see how we do that. »
Marcel Bergeron
He consulted a variety of websites to learn how to grow as well as arrange the colors of plants, he extensively contacted nursery experts and he listened to the valuable advice of a neighbor.
“I got the bug!” It’s so vast, you can learn every day! »
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
Marcel quickly beautified the public land, transforming the atmosphere of the alley.
The following summer, Marcel turned the earth with a shovel and sowed grass. When city employees saw him doing this, they reminded him that it was on public land… The sixty-year-old explained to them that he just wanted to beautify it. We let him do it.
Quickly, the atmosphere in the alley changed. Mothers who avoided the passage returned there with their children and seniors from the CHSLD next door stopped there in the afternoon.
Over the summers, Marcel came to embellish approximately 800 square meters between rue Dézéry and rue Saint-Germain with his hydrangeas, daylilies, coneflowers, rudbeckias, small periwinkles, begonias, impatiens, hostas, pulmonary and its nasturtiums.
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
Colorful flower boxes beautify the landscape.
All along the green link there are now colorful flower boxes. These are often pieces of furniture found in trash bins, painted and transformed, but also sometimes custom-made constructions… And that’s not cheap.
Between two sips of coffee, Marcel explains to me that his case is special.
As the restoration of the public alley is his personal project, it does not meet the standards of a green alley, which would allow him to have access to certain material resources.
He was very successful in getting free mulch, but he notes that the Montreal bureaucracy is a fairly inflexible structure (he has nothing against the people who work there, however, and he wants to make that clear). Marcel therefore estimates having spent around $12,000 in five years to create and maintain the green link.
Neighborhood residents regularly offer him boxes, decorations, compost, plants, money or their arms. Still, it’s quite an investment. In time (it takes him from four to twenty hours a week), as well as in money.
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
Marcel Bergeron
I work a dozen hours a week in a grocery store, I live in a co-op, I don’t have a car and I have no debt. That’s my expense. It makes me happy and it brightens up the neighborhood.
Marcel Bergeron
Marcel pauses and adds that with the past he has had, according to the probabilities, it is not in a garden that he would have put those $12,000…
Gardening not only allowed him to refocus when we were all going through a period of crisis, it also allowed him to be at the heart of his community. Jean Lavigne has lived in the neighborhood for around ten years. It was thanks to the green link that he met Marcel: “He is there every day, having his coffee and welcoming passers-by. What he created brings people together! We now have an excuse to stop and chat. People complain all the time. Marcel took action. »
The thing is contagious. Since Marcel has been gardening, neighbors have been flowering their balconies and asking him for advice. “I’ve been here for 30 years and before that, I didn’t know the people in my neighborhood,” he says, emphasizing the absurdity of the thing…
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, THE PRESS
A sign pays tribute to Marcel’s work.
The neighbors, won over, are now trying to show their gratitude. “Marcel is a silk and since he invested so deeply in his project, we have the privilege of benefiting from it every day,” says Laurence Pellerin-Patenaude. » She and her partner therefore launched a crowdfunding campaign on the GoFundMe platform to give a helping hand “to this generous man”.
Marcel is touched by the initiative. I point out to him that it is fully deserved, that the gift he gives himself by gardening is also an immense gift he offers to his community.
He recognizes it. Besides, if he agreed to talk to me, it was “hoping that it would give ideas to others”. And there’s no need to “go crazy” like him, he tells me. A small square of tree can already make a big difference.
And if Marcel learned to garden at 60, then anyone can do it. It’s about finding our momentum.
Consult the details of the crowdfunding campaign