Month: July 2017

Went over to Trillium North park and visited with the amazing Sharon Kallis, natural plant and fiber artist who is resident artist in this park where we learned to harvest Tansy for dyes, St. John’s Wort for medicine, and Oregon Grape for food and tea. Sharon also showed us how to make rope from plants. This was such an informative and interesting learning opportunity for the youth who were fascinated by the many uses of the plants but also impressed by the beautiful natural area situated within an industrialized inner city area. Sadly however, we also learned much of the park’s natural areas are getting mowed down due to some neighbor’s complaints about this “messiness”. Was very proud of the youth for stepping up and advocating to protect the natural spaces in the park with messages that will be sent to the Parks staff and Board.

View the advocacy document here that was created with the youth to help keep Trillium Park natural:

Keep Trillium North Park Natural

A group of 13 Britannia youth are discovering what urban wild means to them. For some it is creativity, others it is chaos, nature, animals, joy and what better place to explore this wildness theme but at Strathcona and Cottonwood Community Gardens. Year 2 of the Wild Minds summer garden program, a partnership between the Grandview Woodland Food Connection, Environmental Youth Alliance, and Evergreen BC, will be focusing on growing native plants and again, rewilding an area in the Strathcona Gardens all in an effort to better understand the importance of not only growing food in the city, but of creating wild spaces that support ecosystem and biological diversity. Thank you also to Evergreen Foundation and Blue Sky Properties as well as Metro Vancouver – Agriculture Awareness Grants for their generous funding.

Hi Gardeners,

As you know, an early morning fire destroyed our greenhouse and tool/bee shed this week.
We’ve lost a lot and don’t have the money to replace the sheds, the tools and the beekeeping equipment and supplies that were all destroyed. So we have launched a GoFundMe page to raise money.

Here’s a link to the GoFundMe page:https://www.gofundme.com/cottonwood-fire

Here’s a link to our Facebook page which has a link to the GoFundMe page: https://www.facebook.com/SaveCottonwoodCommunityGarden
If you haven’t already, please read the article about the fire with more photos. This post has had 2900 views!

Please make a donation, if you can, and please share the link to our GoFundMe page – on your FaceBook page and/or with family and friends. If you have a website, there are instructions below for adding the GoFundMe widget/button.

Was fortunate that the raspberries ripened just in time to bring the grade 3s down to the garden to pick berries on their second to last day of school. The berry picking, which this year included a few gooseberries (all berries are late this year) is a highlight for the kids. They also found a few baby carrots and lots of radishes, which surprisingly, many of the kids like. It is like a big treasure hunt for the kids.

I am in awe of the new Britannia Community Services Centre Carving Pavilion and garden. The new roof cap was just completed in time for the official blessing and naming, which is now called šxʷqʷeləwən ct Carving Pavilion, meaning One Heart, One Mind. Notice the magnificent Fireweed in the garden. As part of the opening, Metis herbalist Lori Snyder led us on a herb walk through the šxʷqʷeləwən ct garden.