Sometimes a guerrilla gardener needs back-up.

My friend Ann McGuire meets me at the southeast corner of Pape and Cosburn Avenues. This neighborhood mixes high-rise apartments, post-war homes, light industrial businesses such as autobody shops, as well as retail and restaurants. It is a gritty counterpoint to the tonier Danforth Avenue to the south.

Ann is seeking some shade on the steps of the Bethany Baptist Church on a steamy morning in late June. Underneath the church’s hand-painted Food Bank banner is the tiny garden that this guerrilla gardener has chosen to nurture this year. Nothing fancy, but over the course of several covert missions this spring, the garden has been:

— watered and weeded, revealing an eclectic mix of perennials

— received minor repairs to its brick perimeter

— welcomed two new red geranium arrangements, adding a splash of colour, and

— refreshed with a new cover of forest-brown mulch to preserve moisture and keep down weeds.

As a truck pulls up to deliver pallets of food for this week’s food bank (supplying local residents in need, “no questions asked”), Ann and I inspect the tiny garden.

Ann knows her stuff. As a retired teacher and long-time community gardener, she is also a volunteer at Toronto’s Botanical Garden. I point to a mystery perennial that is arising from the mulch. Buds are forming above its thick, light green leaves. “That’s Sedum,” Ann says, noting the star-shaped flowers emerging on stems.

She has a closer look at two shrubs growing around my token pot of geraniums and declares that they are a dwarf variety of cedar. Vigorous hostas show off their wide leaves and first white flowers. A volunteer milkweed plant rises, perhaps to attract the Monarch butterflies that have reached the city from their winter home in Mexico.

The church has obviously put some care into designing and planting this garden. Our mission this year is simply to give it some TLC. The garden fronts a tiny but popular public space. Many area residents take advantage of the red city bench nearby to take a load off, sometimes on the way home from a shopping trip. Others wait on the bench, or in the bus stop close by, for a TTC bus. An artist has beautified a drab hydro box at this corner, using it as the canvas for a colourful mural.

In the wee hours, the city bench on this gritty street corner hosts a few impromptu parties. The guerrilla knows this because he sometimes must dispose of the evidence — like a cigarette lighter or a Mars bar wrapper tossed into the shrubs.

The guerrilla gardener will be out of town for awhile, and Ann has kindly agreed to check in on the tiny garden periodically to do some weeding and watering. She is truly a guerrilla garden Good Samaritan.

To beat the heat, we walk half a block north to the Serano Cafe, a nice meeting spot on the east side of Pape Avenue, with a patio offering morning shade. This cafe is an offshoot of the popular Serano Greek bakery further south on Pape.

As we chat, I learn that Ann is also being a Good Samaritan to one of our fellow community gardeners, Mike Murakami. While Mike recovers from some health issues, Ann has kept in touch with him to offer help. This week she made some tasty cake featuring the red currants from Mike’s Thorncliffe garden plot — and delivered it to Mike in his apartment.

Ann must head off for her volunteer shift in the library of the botanical garden. We part ways. The tiny garden at Pape and Cosburn is in good hands.

Ann is the fifth friend to take up the Guerrilla Garden challenge in 2021. For more on the exploits of this year’s brave band of guerrilla gardeners, see previous posts in this blog.

And here’s to Good Samaritans.