The joyful flurry of spring activity at the Oliver Community Gardens includes many opportunities for the whole community to participate.
Consider yourself invited. You might feel like joining in on the springtime joys of digging, planting, watering, and watching both flowers and vegetables begin to thrive—while looking forward to the summer harvesting, sharing and eating.
You might consider becoming a member or renting a gardening bed yourself or sharing the gardening with someone else. You might support the school children’s gardening efforts or grow fresh veggies for sharing with the food bank. And then there are the cool workshops coming up. And the plant sale!
The Community Gardens are tucked into a beautiful spot near the Oliver Community Arts Council’s Quail’s Nest on Airport Road, and will be the location for interesting hands-on mini-workshops for young and old throughout May and June, as well as for the Bloomin’ Plant Sale on Sunday morning, May 15.
The workshops kicked off May 2 with “Up-Cycling Container Gardening” which had Caroline Whyte guide kids and adults in turning old boots and teacups into pretty planters for Mother’s Day—or, of course, for Father’s Day, or for any random gift-giving with a smile.
The next workshop, on May 11, Wednesday evening, 6 to 7:30 pm, will have horticulturalist Seradaye Lean teach about beneficial insects and how to build a “Bug Hotel” to welcome them into your garden.
Future workshops will include “Companion Planting,” “Square Foot gardening,” and building and planting a “Herb Spiral.”
This year the annual plant sale (May 15, 8:30 to 11 at the Community Gardens) will include some fun kids’ activities, such as making “seed bombs.” You will be able to acquire perennials, herbs, annuals, and veggie plants. For this annual fundraiser for the Community Gardens, (to help with costs of soil, irrigation system and supplies, ) we are relying again on the generosity of the local garden centres who have regularly donated plants, and on the many home gardeners who are busy re-arranging things in their own flower beds, herb gardens or vegetable patches, and are able to donate plants to the cause. And, of course, by buying plants at that sale, you are also helping the Community Gardens.
It is always much appreciated when folks in our community are so supportive of each other in these, literally, “down-to-earth” ways!
Contact our president, Heather(email:[email protected]) or phone: 250-485-2575) for registering for the workshops. If you have plants to donate to the May 15 Plant Sale, also contact Heather to arrange when to drop them off at the Community Gardens behind the Quail’s Nest on Airport Road.
By Brita Park
