About Food Garden Life
Food Garden Life helps home gardeners grow food in ways that fit real life—especially in Canada and other places where winter shapes the gardening season.
You don’t need a large property or endless amounts of time. A food garden might fill a backyard, share space with ornamental plants, or fit into a collection of pots.
Food Garden Life offers practical gardening information without ads, endless affiliate links, or clickbait hype.
There’s also a way of thinking behind it: grow food where you live, make the garden fit your life, question the rules, and leave room to experiment.
Meet Steven Biggs
I’m Steven Biggs, a horticulturist, author, journalist, teacher, and host of The Food Garden Life Show and Fig Culture podcasts.
I garden in Toronto, where I grow vegetables, fruit, herbs, edible flowers, and more than a few plants that aren’t supposed to grow here. My garden is also where I test ideas, question conventional advice, and find practical ways to grow food in a cold climate and limited space.
Through Food Garden Life, I share articles, newsletters, podcasts, books, and gardening classes. I also bring in experienced growers and horticultural colleagues whose ideas deserve a wider audience.
In my Toronto garden, where many Food Garden Life ideas are tested.
How Food Garden Life Began
Food Garden Life began as a father-daughter project.
Emma and I started working together in garden communications when she was in elementary school. We began with talks at libraries and community events and eventually appeared at gardening shows across Canada.
We also wrote two gardening books for families: Grow Gardeners and Gardening with Emma.
In 2022, we received the Landscape Ontario Garden Communicator’s Award of Excellence.
Emma has since moved away and is no longer a regular podcast host. But she remains a founding voice of Food Garden Life. From time to time, I revisit one of our earlier episodes—and Emma might well turn up on the podcast again.
Presenting at a library after the book Grow Gardeners came out.
When schools and gardening events shut down during the COVID pandemic, we were both at home—and missing the people and events that normally filled our gardening world. So we started reaching out through podcasting.
That became The Food Garden Life Show and, eventually, the wider Food Garden Life brand.
In the CBC Toronto studio, talking about gardening on radio shows from coast to coast.
Food Garden Life Today
Today, I lead Food Garden Life and create most of what you’ll find here.
That includes practical gardening articles, a weekly newsletter, The Food Garden Life Show, the Fig Culture podcast, books, and live and self-paced gardening classes.
The connecting thread is simple: helping home gardeners grow food with curiosity, creativity, and an eye to their own circumstances—not somebody else’s list of rules.
Awards
Along the way, the work has received a number of awards and honours.
2026: GardenComm Gold Laurel for the Canada Gardener’s Journal.
2022: Landscape Ontario Garden Communicator’s Award of Excellence for The Food Garden Life Show.
2020: GardenComm Gold Media Award for The Garage Gardeners Radio Show, now The Food Garden Life Show.
2020: GardenComm Emergent Communicator Award for Emma’s work in garden communications.
2020:Gardening with Emma was shortlisted for a Taste Canada Award.
2020: GardenComm Gold Media Award for Grow Lemons Where You Think You Can’t.
2017:Garden Making magazine recognized Emma and me as part of the “green gang” of Canadians making a difference in horticulture.
2012: Garden Writers Association Silver Award for Grow Figs Where You Think You Can’t.
Stay in Touch
I send a weekly newsletter with gardening ideas, useful articles, upcoming classes, podcast episodes, and notes from my Toronto garden.
Visit My Garden
Take a walk through my Toronto garden and see how an ordinary suburban property became a food garden filled with vegetables, fruit, flowers, containers, and unusual edible plants.