Herma Bennett bends to cut stalks of callaloo, a Caribbean vegetable, with a kitchen knife in Chester Le's new community garden.

Bibi Hamid, like Bennett a resident of the public housing complex on Scarborough's Chester Le Boulevard, identifies the small plots by their gardener's ethnicity: That one is an Iranian, that one's Somali, that one's Chinese, she says.

Most never gardened before, but the success of the zucchini, cabbage, eggplant and other crops in a corner of the local schoolyard speaks of their careful attention.

After being torn by violence, poverty and boredom for many years, Chester Le is starting to bloom itself.

A single horrific incident turned the community around.

On June 11, 2003, a neighbour attacked Madiline Monast, a Chester Le resident and single mother of five, with a machete, cutting off both her hands.

Monast's hands were re-attached, her neighbour arrested.

The townhouse complex near Victoria Park and Finch avenues had seen violence before. On a July night four years ago, a young man named Damian Harry Barnaby was chased from around the complex by several men and found shot dead on Victoria Park Avenue.

The machete attack on Monast, however, split the community and became a catalyst for change, Lew Golding, co-ordinator of Chester Le Community Development Project said last week.

Chester Le Junior Public School representatives called residents to a meeting and brought in organizations to explore what could be done.

When Agincourt Community Services held a 10-week cooking class at the school, it went so well the women in it stayed together and became a support group.

This year, Toronto Community Housing offered one of its townhouses as a "community corner", which opened last month, and residents planted the garden.

The complex was designed by the city three decades ago as transitional housing.

"People would move in, get themselves on their feet and move on. That is not the way it worked out," said Golding, adding generations grew up on Chester Le with problems largely rooted in poverty, including drug dealing, violence and "gunshots as a form of recreation and entertainment."

Police preparing to raid a Chester Le townhouse two years ago were startled when a teenager stepped onto a nearby basketball court and started target practice with a bored-out starter pistol.

Vandals even shot up the school flag, said Golding, suggesting such incidents "just spoke of people not being happy."

There's a "tremendous stigma" to being a resident of Chester Le and its children face "an attitude that they're not as smart, that they can't accomplish that much," Golding said, arguing such views encourage young people to drop out. Some youths hang out at the local strip plaza day and night, he said.

One year, the school, which has 252 students, had 75 suspensions. "Young people just were not managing," said Golding, but added this year there were no suspensions.

"People are so caught up in trying to live their lives and survive. That's why there's all this isolation happening" among the residents, said Mayleen Singhroy, hired by the project to hold monthly workshops starting in September on subjects such as relations with police and how to get things fixed.

The garden is a good way to get people together as a community, said Hamid, leader of the 83-member mother's group.

"Chester Le is beautiful. It's just that you have some people, bad ones and good ones."

Other programs to bring men, parents and girls together are on the way. Meanwhile, strong advocacy has politicians paying attention, Golding said.

"What we've done sends a signal to the city government of what is possible with collaboration."

Chester Le became what it was because poor planning left "concrete islands" of low-income residents scattered throughout the city, Ward 39 Mike Del Grande (Scarborough-Agincourt) said, adding the community corner "emphasizes the spirit of a community trying to remove the stigma of being a crime-ridden area" with few community services.

"They took the lead, which is what you want a community to do," Del Grande said. "There's a lot of pride there."

The project is operating on a three-year grant, but appreciates donations of money, services or items such as kitchen equipment, office equipment or toys and games for children, said project co-ordinator Christine Davis, stressing residents have brought in many items themselves.

"There are a lot of people who have really bought into this," she said.

To donate, please call 416-491-3456.