You probably won't come across horse gram, mustard green and elephant foot yam while you're perusing the produce section at your local big box grocery store, but these vegetables are expected to draw hundreds of people to a little patch of land on the grounds of the Toronto Botanical Garden this summer.

Horticulturalists at the massive green space at Lawrence Avenue and Leslie Street plan to plant hundreds of authentic Indian fruits and vegetables this spring to celebrate the south Asian nation's culture and its 60th anniversary of independence, which was officially marked last August.

The focus on Indian food is part of the Kitchen Garden program, which is currently in its third year.

"We choose a culture or community that makes up the multicultural society of Toronto as it were," Cathie Cox, director of horticulture at Toronto Botanical Garden, told CityNews.ca.

"We did the Japanese the first year we were in existence, we did the Caribbean last year and this year we decided to do Indian vegetables."

To see Ms. Cox talk about the Kitchen Garden, click on the video link above.

For those who aren't familiar with the vegetables being grown, signage will be placed out with the English names, the botanical names and the Hindi names.

To ensure the plants and the growing process are as authentic as possible, growers here in Toronto contacted a horticulturist in India for advice and also reached out to members of the local Indian community asking for their expertise.

"The biggest challenge to us was first of all ... if you choose Indian plants, then the first thing you've got to realize is the soil has to be warm and the conditions have to be consistently warm," Cox explained at the end of April. "So that leaves a bare spot in your garden for spring. We're itching to get into this but we have to wait until the last week of May, until the soil actually feels warm."

The cultivation of these vegetables is about much more than food. For people who grew up with these plants, visiting the Kitchen Garden temporarily transports them back to the nation of their birth.

"Most of the people who come from the country that we're actually displaying the vegetables from come because they feel at home. It's a connection to where they came from and they seem to be really energized," Cox said.

"They almost feel it's a compliment. Unless you grow your own vegetables in an allotment or something like that you're not going to see your own vegetables from India growing normally, so they're really, really pleased."

Many visitors bring their children and grandchildren to the garden to share the experience, she added.

Outside the confines of the Toronto Botanical Garden, immigrants make up a large percentage of urban gardeners growing food, according to Jonas Spring, a horticulturalist who runs the landscaping company Ecoman.

"My experience over the last 10 years of being in business is just that the people that are really growing food are immigrants, like Portuguese, Italian, Chinese ... and they have grapes and they have peaches and they have apples and tomatoes  and basil and they don't need a gardener," he explained.

"I can tell when I drive down a street like Shaw ... which houses are still owned by the Portuguese or Italian people and it's because of the flowers they pick, whether or not there's a fruit tree in the front, in the back, and you're in the alley and you see grape arbour ... you can almost tell a story by what's in the garden."

Egidio Mancini grew up near Rome and came to Canada back in 1951 and to say he's passionate about gardening would be an understatement.

Since retiring, the 75-year-old says his agricultural oasis in the backyard is "my whole world now".

Mancini's tireless dedication to growing fresh and wholesome food for his family is clearly evident in the backyard of his home in the north end of the city. More than half of the space has been meticulously tilled and dedicated to cultivating food from his native nation, including Romano tomatoes and rapini, as well as lettuce, garlic, onions, beans - "just about anything" he says.

Egidio shows off the plants he's prepared for the spring, including garlic and lettuce inside his makeshift greenhouse.

The former chocolatier has been spending his summers in the garden for decades. When asked just how much of the day he passes in the vegetable patch his wife of 50 years, Angela, let out a loud guffaw.

"Until she starts fighting with me," Mancini jokes. "I spend a lot of time out here."

The self-taught gardener created his own makeshift greenhouse with transparent tarp and wire to keep his plants warm until the soil is ready to receive the transplants.

Mancini is not only a talented gardener, he's an efficient one.

"All the leaves I produce here, nothing's going to go in the garbage," he explained.

He's an avid composter and refuses to use any chemical fertilizers.

"It's important because I know what I'm eating. When you buy today they put fertilizer and they're spraying on the chemical and when I'm growing I know what I'm eating - that's the most important thing," he said.

Egidio and Angela Mancini stand beside their backyard cherry tree.

Mancini turns out an impressive harvest year after year, which is demonstrated by the sheer amount of food stored in his cantina. He grows Romano tomatoes because they stand up the best in terms of flavour when it comes to jarring.

Every year he grows about 90 tomato plants, each one grows about seven feet high and produces 70 to 80 bright red pieces of fruit, he said.

Mancini, an ardent do-it-yourselfer who also presses his own Ruby Cabernet grapes in his garage for his tasty homemade wine, is also an accomplished musician who plays several instruments, including the accordion, mandolin, organ, and guitar.

To check out Mancini's talents in the garden and on the squeeze box, click on the video link at the top of the page.

Main picture of the Kitchen Garden at Toronto Botanical Garden courtesy of torontobotanicalgarden.ca.

shawne.mckeown@chumtv.com

Like this story? Check out the other two parts of my series - Seeds in the City:

Part One: Urban Agriculture and Activism - Food Security For All

Part Two: Life In Laneways, Toronto's Tree Crisis and Transforming Derelict Spaces With Plants