B.C. man volunteers to transform damaged lawn into inspiring garden

Sawatsky Sign-Off: David digs Adam finds out why a man in Vancouver is volunteering to dig in the dirt between the sidewalk and his apartment building.

VANCOUVER — As David Bronstein digs in the dirt between the sidewalk and his apartment building, he notices a worm.

“I suppose this is their home,” David says, gently picking it up and placing it under the soil. “So I put it back.”

Although David is the type of person who cares for the well-being of wayward worms, this is not a story about some sort of bond between the two.

“[Worms] help with the aeration of the soil,” David says.

And though David does find weeding and watering wonderful, this is not a story about the mental health benefits of gardening.

“I’ve enjoyed this tremendously,” David says of working on this plot of land that was once covered with lawn. “It’s uplifting and calming.”

Instead, this is a story about what happened after the grass in front of David’s building was dug up to install underground infrastructure.

“It looked pretty awful,” David says.

And the solution to fix it seemed pretty simple.

“The easiest thing to do would have been to re-seed [the grass],” David says.

But after a long career in health care, David has learned easier is not always better.

“It‘s very easy to be nice to pleasant people,” David says of the patients he encountered. “But we really have to work harder to be nice to people who aren’t pleasant.”

So David started making an effort to be actively nice to those who weren’t, and began noticing a difference.

“A lot of people say after, ‘Thank you so much. I really appreciated your help,’” David says. “And I’d remember them.”

Now David is hoping something similar will happen with the unpleasant patch of land, by doing the more difficult thing of taking out the grass and putting in a garden.

“So you have so much more to look at and hopefully enjoy,” David says.

Did you notice David said, you? That’s because he’s been volunteering his time — countless hours over many months — to create this as an oasis for others.

“Something hopefully beautiful has happened for them,” David says, referring to people walking along the sidewalk. “That takes them out of their own mind for a little bit.”

David hopes the garden that he’s filled with all sorts of leafy greens and bright blooms will inspire us to look up from our phones and down to what’s growing all around us.

“It gives a connection to something that’s more than yourself and realize that we’re part of something else,” David says. “It’s everyone and everything and there’s a larger picture.”