A new teaching garden at the Wychwood Barns is trying to do something useful with QR codes.

By Steve Kupferman

Amanda Gomm, manager of volunteer and community engagement at LEAF, demonstrates the smartphone functionality of the new teaching garden her organization opened near the Wychwood Barns.

Ever since QR codes—those square, barcode-ish things you can scan with the camera on a smartphone—started appearing on every flat surface, everywhere, they’ve felt like a solution in search of a problem. In theory, they could have useful applications, but so far they’ve served mainly as a way for advertisers to create printable links to the websites of their corporate clients. And so all credit to local environmental nonprofit LEAF for using the codes to create what they are billing as “Canada’s first smartphone friendly public garden,” in the southwest corner of the park surrounding the Artscape Wychwood Barns. The garden opened this afternoon.

Funded with money from Ontario Power Generation, the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Evergreen, Home Depot, and with a grant from the City’s own Livegreen Toronto (i.e., one of those City grants programs of which Rob Ford is not a fan), the garden is a 128-by-12-foot sliver of land next to a dog park. Planted with spicebush, wild strawberry, and nearly 50 other types of native plants, its distinguishing feature is the presence of QR codes on small placards in front of each piece of greenery. Visitors can aim their smartphones at the codes to access a website with detailed botanical information.

Is this truly an improvement upon say, using one’s smartphone to look up a plant species on Wikipedia? That, we suppose, will be up to users to decide. In the meantime, the park is an attractive little addition to an already attractive part of town—worth a visit should you find yourself in the neighbourhood, no matter what kind of phone you have.