Ladner Community Garden

Its almost May and I hope everyone is gearing up for the opening of the Ladner Community Garden. For those of you who have allotments, its time to start planning what you want to grow. To start, grow vegetables that your family will eat. Its always an easy way to start. I am excited we have lots of new gardeners coming on board. We will be there to give you advice along the way if needed. We even have a list of planting times for vegetables on the lower mainland for those who need one. So when will we open? We are hoping to open before the end of May. Right now the city has done a final inspection of the land and its an all clear as far as underground locates go. The next step is clearing and leveling the land, a job I will leave to the farmers to do for us since its what they do best. That should happen over the next couple of weeks before they get busy planting their own fields. After that is done, the city will be installing water for us, hooray! We are busy getting supplies ordered...

Its official. We finally received our incorporation papers. I know, what does that have to do with a community garden? Well you just don't start planting as we found out very quickly. You have to apply for a name for your society through the provincial government. First you apply for a name by checking trademarks and copyrights. Luckily Ladner Community Garden Society wasn't taken. You pay a fee for the name right away. The next step is applying for incorporation. You want to form a society and have directors as you can't lease public space without going through this process. Okay, another fee, a hundred dollars to be exact. Applying for incorporation is writing bylaws which can be painful at best if you want to write your own. Thank you Mark for doing such a wonderful job writing our bylaws. If you don't write your own, there are easier ways such as following out set bylaws as given in the Society Act. Our hard work as paid off as we received our red seal of approval ...

Hi everyone. Thanks again for the overwhelming support from everyone. The Ladner Community Garden has been taking calls since the front page spread in the Delta Optimist. We are getting things in place for a fundraiser and ground breaking day. We can't wait to get our hands dirty and get some seeds planted. If you would like to be involved with the Ladner Community Garden, let us know by emailing us at lcgarden@Eastlink.ca We would love to have volunteers to help us get started. The Delta Farmers Institute has offered to plow the land for us. Many thanks to councilor, Ian Paton, for his support. Like he told me yesterday, we are farmers too. We are waiting for the city to let us know when the irrigation will go in.We would love to see us building this garden in May. We will be holding a fundraiser and silent auction in April so I will have tickets available next week. There are some great auction items coming from the local businesses. I love silent auctions. Crazy bidder here.

It's Monday and also council meeting night. That means we will have a decision on the new community garden for Ladner. This garden will be built on Kensington park in east Ladner just north of Hollypark drive. What a great way to use the land, don't you think? Right now it just looks like pasture. There will still be lots of land left for dog walkers as we are only asking for half an acre of the three acre parcel. We look forward to being part of this neighborhood and hope to have everyone enjoy the garden once it is completed. Today is photo day at the park. The Delta Optimist will be running a story on the new community garden so look for it in the local paper this week. Let me introduce you to the Ladner Community Garden Society. Well there is me but then I think everyone knows me already. I am known as the Delta Gardener around town. Next is Michelle Wilson, another familiar face, as she has lived her whole life in delta. Now that's something! Michelle is the Public Re...

Oh my is all I can say. You don't realize how much you need to get a community garden off the ground until you start making a list. Of course, the main things that come to mind are the lumber and soil to get the raised beds started. I have been pricing out lumber,looking for soil, aged manure and compost.I am not sure what the biggest expense is so far, the lumber or the liability insurance. Once we have those, we can get started. I would love to see people planting next month. Wouldn't that be great? We are also looking for tools, things like shovels, wheelbarrows, forks, and rakes. If you are getting rid of any of these this week, let us know, we will gladly come and take them off your hands. We are planning a compost demonstration area in the garden. Hopefully we can have several different kinds of composters on site. This garden will be a no trash garden, pack it in, pack it out is our theme. Everything else must be composted. When we have all our supplies of lumber, soil, ...