SGGS: Harvesting and Delicious Food Catered by Cat!

🌱 Sun July 11th, Small Group Gardening Session at RPCG 🌱

We concentrated on tidying up the garden, removing the spent foliage for composting, pruning the espalier orchard and weeding!  We also had a great harvest, with many zucchini and squash, a bucket of Red Chieftain potatoes, shallots and green onions, as well as a large pile of second crop lettuce (where the original plant has been cut away and regrowth has occurred from the base!).  Additionally, there was a magnificent harvest from the blueberry bushes, the raspberries, tayberries and a few remaining strawberries.  Afterwards, we were treated to a Strawberry Lunch provided by Cat Poppins Catering, including strawberry shortcake, strawberry black pepper pies, some savoury items, as well as a delicious strawberry and mint cocktail!

Parents & Children Group: Storytime and Exploring the Garden

We had our Parents and Children group on Friday, July 9th for the Mandarin speakers in our community. Thank you Annie for organizing this event.

Check out our calendar for more events.

Seniors Event: Line Dancing, Pole Walking and More!

We had a wonderful seniors event on Friday, July 9th! There was a line dancing group as well as a pole walking group. We also provided snacks and produce harvest from our gardens. Thank you Annie for organizing the event!

Check out our calendar for the upcoming senior’s event days.

Butterfly Rangers Tour in Riley Park Community Garden

As part of Pollinator Week celebrations, RPCG hosted David Suzuki Foundation Butterfly Rangers to a tour of the garden.

Right on cue, a Western Tiger Swallowtail butterfly landed on a large grouping of fireweed in the Rewilder section of the garden.  We have also been visited by a Painted Lady Butterfly, who also joined us for the event Lori Weidenhammer, also a Butterfly Ranger, and a passionate pollinator advocate, has observed that RPCG has the greatest diversity of pollinators in any community garden she’s visited!  After Selina Pope, Master Gardener & Butterfly Ranger, gave a tour of all the pollinator borders, the group was hosted to a light lunch of homemade falafel’s, using lettuce, mint, and chard from the garden, and cooling herbal ice tea made from mint, holy basil and the stevia (sweet) plant, all grown in the garden.  The group also enjoyed free pollinator plant giveaways, and a variety of pollinator plant seeds, to take away to ‘cross pollinate’ in their own gardens and community garden projects.

“Your garden is fabulous!!! Wow! Thank you for the tour!” – Melissa Haynes

“Thanks so much for hosting an awesome event!” – Lori Weidenhammer

A huge thank you to TD Parks People for funding!

SGGS: A Big Harvest Day!

🌱 Wed July 7th, Small Group Gardening Session at RPCG 🌱

Harvested red, yellow and black raspberries, blueberries, tayberries, & strawberries today. Potato harvest also started today with the early Warba potatoes, dug up about 10kg worth! And our zucchini harvest is starting to steadily climb. A portion of this harvest will be donated to Little Mountain Court Seniors Day. Today’s snack consisted of herbal tea from the garden and tayberry muffins.