For nearly 100 years, Don Valley Brick Works supplied Toronto with masonry bricks and helped the city rebuild and grow after a devastating fire. By 1984, however, the kilns were closed down, and the factory buildings languished. Urban explorers and partying teens found their way in, and graffiti soon covered the brick walls.

The derelict factory might eventually have been torn down. Instead, Toronto brought it back to life in the form of a community environmental center that includes a farmer’s market, a small garden shop, a cafe, a bike shop, a children’s playground, a lake and hiking trails, and art display space. Opened in 2010, Evergreen Brick Works offers workshops, community festivals, and tours of its sustainable features like water harvesting and ecological demonstration gardens.

We toured Evergreen Brick Works during the Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling in early June. I found it to be an inspirational re-use project, not unlike the High Line in New York. New features, like an exploratory playground/garden for children (pictured), co-exist with original buildings like this tall smokestack.

There was a lot of activity at Sunday midday, when we were led on a tour around the facility and then treated to box lunches.

The playground has many fun features to engage kids with gardening and nature, like a tepee, shovels and wheelbarrows, planting beds in stock tanks, and even, I think, a pizza oven — for cooking up homegrown veggies?

Around the other side of the building, circular demonstration gardens show locals what can be done, like this lushly planted rain garden.

Several bloggers pulled up colorful chairs here and relaxed in the sunshine, including Helen, Gail, and Jean.

Attached to one of the exterior walls is an incredible art installation and living sculpture, Watershed Consciousness by Ferruccio Sardella. Constructed of Corten and stainless steel, vertically planted with sedums, and trickling with water from top to bottom, this large-scale water feature is also a map of Toronto’s watersheds.

As the artist explains on his website, “Presented as copper and brass rods that lace across the work, only the major road and rail arteries are depicted along with the vertical-horizontal axis of Yonge st. and Bloor st. Instead of the repetitive criss crossing of city streets, the piece depicts ghostly homages to the lost rivers of Toronto etched into the rusted steel. To consider this work as a map is to confront Toronto’s ecological essence.” In this photo, our tour guide points out some of the details.

The water trickles down through the sculpture and is collected on a shallow steel “table” before being recirculated through the work. This little girl found it to be a fun splash table.

Beautiful details are evident throughout the Brick Works, like this flower-power metal railing on stairs and balconies.

Inside, the brick kilns have been preserved, along with the graffiti that, over the decades, eventually marked every wall.

Having recently watched Banksy Does New York, I found the graffiti more interesting than the old kilns.

It’s ghostly evidence of a subculture of street artists, and this was their art gallery.

It’s all a bit spooky in the dusty, dimly lit kiln hall.

Preserving the graffiti was a smart move, just as the High Line preserved the look of weedy growth atop an abandoned rail line. It acknowledges the history of the place, which is not just about brick making.

Behind the brick factory, an old quarry has been turned into a picturesque lake, with hiking trails all around it.

Anything is possible, according to the graffiti artist who tagged this building.

Indeed, the transformation of a derelict old factory into a vibrant community eco-center seems as unlikely as anything, and yet it worked. I hope it, like the High Line in New York, inspires other cities to consider how they might transform their own blighted industrial places into something green and beautiful and designed for people to enjoy.

Coming up next: A Toronto wildlife garden with an artful touch. For a look back at Cabbagetown garden art and the Hugh Garner Co-Op Green Roof, click here.

All material © 2006-2015 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.