“7 Gardens Brought Before the Law” (2017)

In this essay in the Book of Lists (edited by Ira Basen and Jane Farrow), Lorraine tells the stories of seven rebel gardeners who blazed a trail for front-yard naturalization in Canadian gardens—fighting against convention and winning the battle to grow biodiversity in their gardens and boulevards despite municipal efforts to police biodiversity.

“Revisiting Victory: Gardens Past, Gardens Future” (2009)

With her contribution to the essay collection The Edible City: Toronto’s Food from Farm to Fork (edited by Christine Palassio and Alana Wilcox), Lorraine looks back at the Victory Garden movement during the world wars and the Depression, suggesting that a massive mobilization of effort in service of urban food-growing is what we need now. The essay is a call to reimagine our cities—and our place as residents within it—as productive and generative.

“Bogged Down: Water-wise Gardeners Get the Flush” (2008)

In this contribution to the essay collection HTO: Toronto’s Water from Lake Iroquois to Lost Rivers to Low-Flow Toilets (edited by Wayne Reeves and Christina Palassio), Lorraine writes: “Toronto has spent millions trying to solve the ‘problem’ of stormwater, and thousands on court cases over naturalized gardens designed so that water seeps into the ground.” The essay tells the stories of gardeners Douglas Counter and Deborah Dale, who went to court to defend their ecological plantings.

“Imagining Public Livestock in the City” (2016)

Lorraine’s essay in the book Integrated Urban Agriculture (edited by Robert L. France) is a commentary in response to another essay in the collection, Darrin Nordahl and Catherine Fisher’s “Public Produce by the People, For the People.” Exploring the concept of raising at least some domestic livestock closer to home—in cities—Lorraine imagines what public livestock could look like, in parks, schoolgrounds, community gardens.

“Food for Change” (2007)

From Lorraine’s essay in the book GreenTopia: Towards a Sustainable Toronto, edited by Alana Wilcox, Christina Palassio and Jonny Dovercourt: “Despite the vast amount of energy consumed by the global food system and in spite of the current interest in global warming, there’s very little government attention focused on the food system and the impact of our food choices on the climate crisis.”

“As long as discussions around the issue of buying local remain isolated in the environmental sphere, meaningful change that gets at the root causes of damage and inequities will continue to elude us.”

“Roots to Roofs: The Greening of Toronto” (2005)

From Lorraine’s essay in UTOpia: Towards a New Toronto, edited by Jason McBride and Alana Wilcox: “We need a gardening ethos that seeps not just into thumbs but into minds, leading us away from stodgy conformity (the lawn-and-order aesthetic that surrounds us) and towards brash acts of botanical abandon.”

“Annual flowers in boulevard planters along University Avenue might make Toronto look better (especially when one is driving by at sixty kilometres an hour) but meaningful change isn’t annual, withering and fading like petunias and pansies. It’s deep rooted and perennial, just like the enduring change that Toronto’s growing band of rogue gardeners is digging in and planting”