Last year, the members of the Sechelt Garden Club, including a few who hold the Master Gardener designation, challenged themselves to raise $1,000 and grow 1,000 lbs of produce for the food bank. They exceeded their fundraising goal but came up a bit short of the target for food and discovered that though they are well-versed in growing beautiful blooms and shrubs, assessing soil health, and diagnosing plant disease, vegetable gardening is a different science.
Determined to help their group expand their knowledge, Lee Tidmarsh, the club’s president, and Pat Kolterman, director of community projects, sought help. They approached Vanessa Choo, a volunteer with the Sechelt Seed Library and the team lead for the Sunshine Coast Botanical Garden’s volunteer-run Veggie Garden, which provides all its produce to the food bank, to ask if she would consider offering a workshop to support new gardeners at “Let's Get Growing,” a spring seed and seedling event hosted by the Sechelt Seed Library on April 5.
“I had another idea,” Choo says. She proposed that the Sechelt Garden Club and the Botanical Garden team up to offer a year-long, hands-on vegetable gardening course to take new gardeners from starting a vegetable bed to closing out for the year. “And we could launch that course at the event. It would be free of charge.”
With a small caveat.
In exchange, selected course participants commit to becoming members of the Sechelt Garden Club, volunteer with the Veggie Garden while they are already up at the Botanical Garden for the course, and “grow-a-row” for the food bank.
“At our annual year-end meeting with the staff at the food bank, we asked if they had any requests, and this time the need was “more tomatoes, please.” Choo adds, “Tomatoes require more watering and care, and our Veggie Garden volunteers only come in to tend and harvest two days a week, so I knew that if we wanted to be able to make good on this request, we’d need volunteers to come to the Botanical Garden for a third day.”
She ran the idea past Cathy Hallam who serves as director at large with the Sechelt Garden Club, and as vice president on the board for the Sunshine Coast Botanical Garden: “I love this idea!” Hallam shares that this collaboration will help meet the needs of both organizations, grow more food for the Sunshine Coast Community Services’ food programs, and support new and seasoned gardeners on their journey towards food security. “I also love the format: hands-in-soil while you learn – it doesn’t get any better!”
Pat Kolterman too is keen on the idea. “Last year our focus was growing a thousand pounds of food for the food bank, but this year it’s nurturing gardeners.” Kolterman adds, “Kind of like that old saying, give a woman a fish and she’ll eat for a day, but teach her to fish or garden, and she’ll eat for a lifetime.”
Registration: Sechelt Seed Library’s “Let’s Get Growing” event, April 5 at Sechelt Library.
Interested participants can sign up after the course presentation at noon and 1:15 p.m.
There will also be two mini-workshops: “Seed Starting” at 12:15 p.m. and “Soil” at 12:45 p.m., conducted by members of the Sechelt Garden Club.
For further details, please email [email protected].
