02/04/2013

PlantCatching: free your seeds!

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Today, I take you to Montreal ! Yes, there are a lot of initiatives in this city. Do you remember Daisy?
This time, Nicolas is the guide…
Nicolas, who are you, where are you?
I’m French, 42 years old, maried, 3 children, and I’m living in Montreal since 2000. I live at the ground floor of a duplex, in a green family neighborhood, where gardens are small.
Software developer since always, I am my own boss since 2006 and few years later, I started having interest in gardening.


PlantCatching, what is it?

PlantCatching allowed people to register free plants, bulbs, seeds, gardening equipment, and also harvest left over. One can also search, on a map, donations from other gardeners around him.

This service is different from forums, classifieds pages, because it’s spontaneous and gifts are fast (in particular if you choose the « public » mode, explained on the website) and because access to plants or other stuff is really easy. All items are free. PlantCatching focuses on gardeners altruism.


How did the project born?

PlantCatching is a citizen initiative, born from the simple idea that one can find plants given by gardeners in his neighborhood. I have spent a lot of money in nursery for my garden. I had this dream to realize, all the more since the project didn’t exist yet. My job helped me in this project. I have launched PlantCatching, as an experience. I developed the service quickly in order to see the audience’s reactions. It was good.

 

What are you proud of in this project ?

I’m proud to have taken PlantCatching the place it is today. In the past, I was used to solitary work, behind my desk. With PlantCatching, I had to surpass myself and learned to connect wih other and to pitch PlantCatching in several events. I still don’t realize PlantCatching was on TV and radio prime time shows. I could have felt overtaken by the task’s scale but I went through difficulties, step by step.

Plant Catching

Do you have highlights in 2013?

Instead of highlights, it’s rather a day to day challenge for this 2nd year of the project. Winter slows down the activity on the website. But soon I have to boost the machine, motivate gardeners, go on in communication efforts. I don’t know if I’ll have highligths, the future will say.

 

Does the word BiodiverCity inspire you?

For me, it represents the multitude of initiatives in urban agriculture movement. I hope it’s not only a trend and that all projects show us the real citizens will to  leave a world which took a wrong direction. It’s in urban area that one can see this change and that the will to get closer to nature appears.

 

If you had to take me to BiodiverCity places in Montreal, where should we go ?

Montreal is very active in urban agriculture. Past year, there was plebiscite and in 2013, the city should publish recommandations. Projets should sprout everywhere. In summer, I’ll take you to small green alleys and then visit LUFA farms, first commercial greenhouses on a rooftop. Downtown, Mont Royal park and botanical garden would be included in the tour. We would finish with a small lot, a collective garden in my neighborhood.