Montreal could make a strong claim to being the urban agriculture capital of the world. The city of 1.6 million has over 79 community gardens that serve tens of thousands of residents. That’s a small fraction, sure, but it’s huge compared to the numbers being thrown up by the competition.
The obvious weirdness here is that Montreal has a relatively short growing season — it runs from May to the end of September. But Vikram Bhatt, an architecture professor at McGill University, believes that the cold actually bolsters the cultivation trend.
“Perhaps because [the season] is so short, people engage in it very actively,” Bhatt tells Inverse. “During the warm periods, the weather is good, and things grow very well.”