Feature: Burnaby Community Garden Parties

On September 28 and October 5, the Goodlad and Still Creek community gardens in Burnaby will come alive with fun music, engaging performances, beautiful fresh-grown food, and fantastic community.

Burnaby Community Garden Parties

Date: Sunday, September 28
Location: Goodlad Gardens, Backyard (7912 Goodlad Street / Burnaby - map)

Date: Sunday, October 5
Location: Still Creek Gardens (2702 Norland Avenue / Burnaby - map)

Time: 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Cost: FREE

Join Building Caring Communities, Burnaby Association for Community Inclusion (BACI), Can You Dig It, and the In the House Festival as they animate the gardens! Wander amongst the flowers and vegetables that have been lovingly grown, share food grown in the garden, enjoy live entertainment, and laugh with neighbours, friends and friends-to-be.

Also, on September 28, come by to visit Burnaby Food First at our information table!

The events are free and wheelchair accessible.

For more information, please visit the Facebook event page here.

The garden party events are sponsored and supported by VanCity, Festivals Burnaby, Edmonds People In Community, Can You Dig It, Building Caring Communities, and Burnaby Association for Community Inclusion (BACI).

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About Building Caring Communities: Building Caring Communities is an initiative that shows how we all are changed when we share our gifts with others. It is a miraculous story of how a small group of staff from the social service sector began having different types of conversations. This has resulted in people becoming active citizens, having more friends, and helping neighbourhoods come more alive.

About BACI: Burnaby Association is an organization that offers services for people with intellectual disabilities and their families in Metro Vancouver. The series fits with BACI's mission to build stronger, more inclusive neighbourhoods and friendships while enjoying some great entertainment.

About Can You Dig It: Can You Dig It supports communities to create inclusive and welcoming food-growing gardens where individuals from all backgrounds and life experiences can learn, share, grow and contribute to the betterment of their communities. We grow more than food; we cultivate relationships and foster a true sense of belonging. Together we can all plant a seed!

About In the House: In The House has a mission of building community through arts and culture and transforming homes into intimate cultural spaces where living rooms and backyards are given over to shows that feature all genres of music, dance, theatre, circus, magic, puppets, storytelling, spoken word, cabaret and more.

Feature: Urban Digs Farm in Burnaby

We're lucky in Burnaby to have active farms in the Big Bend area. One of the newest and most exciting in recent years is Urban Digs Farm, which operates using organic methods and principles. They have a 3-acre homestead farm in the Big Bend where they grow vegetables and raise pigs, rabbits, chickens, ducks, and geese, among other activities. They offer Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) boxes and have a small community garden.

Hard at work on Urban Digs Farm
Credit: Mario Bartel of the Burnaby NewsLeader

Urban Digs Farm is also building some great partnerships with local businesses. For example, the nearby PriceSmart Foods at Market Crossing is donating produce that is past its prime to Urban Digs, which they use to feed their pigs!

Other partnerships include providing free-range eggs and local produce to the Livia Lunch restaurant, which is just down the road in the Riverway business complex, and delivering Avalon Dairy products (an organic dairy producer whose bottling facility is located in Burnaby) with their CSA boxes.

For more details on how the Farm is partnering and working closely with local businesses, visit the great article in the Burnaby NewsLeader about the farm.

If you would like to get more involved, the Farm also accepts volunteers!

A happy volunteer hard at work on Urban Digs Farm
Source: Urban Digs Farm

Feature: Sharing Backyards

For people who want to grow their own food but lack the yard space, it can be difficult to access land or sufficient space to grow plants or keep planters.

Credit: Christina Mak

The goal of the Sharing Backyards program is to provide anyone who wants to grow food with the yard space to do it. It encourages urban gardening by connecting those who have the space to garden with those who would like to garden but do not have the necessary space.

By bringing the program to communities, the hope is to, among other things, boost the land available for urban agriculture, lower waiting lists for community garden plots, decrease the amount of food that needs to be shipped across the country, and help people lower their food costs.

Sharing Backyards already exists in a number of different cities, from Vancouver to Ottawa (and all the way to New Zealand!), but if your city doesn't have a program running, you can start a yard-sharing program in your community.

Best of all, whether you're looking for yard space or to share space you already have, Sharing Backyards is 100% free for all users! (Courtesy of sponsors who support each of the local programs.)

Want to know more? Check out Sharing Backyards here.

Applications Open: Community Gardening Plots

Want to grow your own food but don't have the space?

Community gardens open space to interested gardeners and other like-minded community members to grow everything from food to flowers for home use. For a small fee, gardeners gain the use of an individual plot of land that they must maintain, in exchange for a small contribution to the upkeep and maintenance of the entire community garden.

Gardens are often very popular and available plots may be limited -- so act quickly and get in touch with your local community garden!

Interested in checking things out?

Many community gardens, like those hosted by Burnaby and Region Allotment Gardens Association (BARAGA) and Sustainable SFU in Burnaby and the Queen Mary and Lillooet Park Community Gardens in North Vancouver, are currently full, with waitlists being taken for plots that may open up in the future.

If you're in no hurry, you can register for a waiting list. In the event a plot is not renewed or becomes available, you will be notified on a first-come, first-serve basis.

If you're looking to get your hands in sooner than that, community gardens such as those run by Urban Digs are now open to applications. You can find many by doing a search online for your particular community or city of residence.

A preliminary list can also be found here: http://www.cityfarmer.org/vanccomgard83.html

Source: Urban Digs Farm

Urban Digs Farm

The community garden at Urban Digs Farm in Burnaby has 25 plots available to grow food, flowers, and herbs for personal use. This year's season starts in early- to mid-May and runs until the end of February 2014.

For a small yearly fee ($20), gardeners will be assigned an individual plot, an 8 x 4 foot raised bed. If a gardener meets their responsibilities and the Farm guidelines, there are opportunities to continue for the next season.

To find out more about the Urban Digs Farm community garden program, or to complete an application form, visit the Farm website: http://www.urbandigsfarm.com/community-garden.html