The Social Gardener

The Social Gardener is not your average café—it is a bud on the tree of the Riverdale Hub that has just started to blossom. Started by the grassroots women’s organization The Riverdale Immigrant Women’s Centre, the Hub is an organization housed in the historic building at 1326 Gerrard Street East, working hard towards a vision of environmental sustainability, social enterprise development and progressive social change. The Hub has transformed the building, and it now boasts a geothermal heating and cooling system, hot water solar and daylighting, bio-walls, an eco-roof and a rainwater garden. Housed within this elaborate architectural ecosystem lives a co-location space, an events space for yoga or dance classes, a huge open concept kitchen for cooking classes and The Social Gardener, a fair trade café that opened its doors in January 2014. With doors wide open, The Social Gardener serves up fair trade coffee, homemade macrobiotic and vegan food, as well as a wealth of career training opportunities for the Gerrard East community.