Nanaimo Community Gardens Society

Available from our greenhouse during Beban Learning Garden work parties, Wednesdays 10am- noon, Mondays 4-6 and Saturdays 10-12 (this last starting March 14). Veggie, Herbs and pollinator supporting flower transplants for planting out now!

Family Day on Monday Feb 16th will be held at Beban Park this year. And our Beban Learning Gardens location will be included in the celebration.

The activities will take place between 11 and 1pm and BLG volunteers will be touring visitors around the site and answering questions and there will be various activities suitable for all ages including plant art, showing the worm farm and making seed bombs.

Make a stop at Beban Learning Gardens part of your family activities for the day! Our volunteers would love to see you and show you what we do.

Here is the City of Nanaimo webpage that gives further information on this event.

Family Day Poster 2026 (click on this to see poster)

“Celebrate Seeds and The People Who Nurture the Seed”

The purpose of Seedy Sunday Nanaimo is to educate and engage the community in the preservation of heritage seeds through an annual seed exchange event. The Seedy Sunday event is a vital element in the cultivation and co-creation of sustainable communities. This event includes a seed exchange, educational workshops and displays that foster home gardening, local agriculture and sustainable practices which do not rely on the use of toxic chemicals.

Everybody is welcome to attend this popular annual event. Trade or purchase organic and non-hybrid seeds, native plants, bee houses, rain barrels and other tools for self-reliance. There will also be an activity centre for kids! Bring your own seeds to the seed exchange table. This popular event, which is put on by the Nanaimo Foodshare Society and the Nanaimo Community Garden Society, traditionally takes place on the first Sunday of every March, just in time for gardeners to pick up a great variety of seeds, seedlings, and other gardening material and supplies. The focus is on, but not limited to, organic, heritage and heirloom seed varieties. Attendees should be sure to bring their own well marked seeds to trade at the seed exchange table.

The Seed Swap is the core of our Seedy Sunday event. Bring any extra saved seeds for vegetables and flowers to swap. The swap table is always busy and full of different varieties of seed for you to take home and try growing this spring!

Each year, highlights of Seedy Sunday include:
• Seed exchange table
• free workshops included in admission (see below)
• 40 +Exhibitors -Want to exhibit? Contact us at seedysunday@nanaimofoodshare.ca
• Local, BC, open-pollinated, organic and natural seeds for sale
• Seedlings, plants, small fruits, succulents for sale
• Displays
• Garden & food products
• Fertilizers
• Kids’ activities

• Master Gardeners

Seedy Sunday 2026 will be held at Nanaimo District Secondary School (355 Wakesiah Ave.) on Sunday March 1 from 10am to 3pm.

Click here to see the in-person workshops 2026 scheduled at NDSS during Seedy Sunday event

To find local Seedy Sunday and Seedy Saturday events, check out this calendar FarmFolk CityFolk | Community Seedy Saturdays & Sundays – FarmFolk CityFolk

We are passionate about growing our own food all year and helping Nanaimo gardeners do the same. We are celebrating self sufficiency, resilience and the joy of growing your own food! The Victory Garden Fest is a family friendly event that empowers people of all ages to cultivate their own healthy, home grown produce, whether in a backyard, balcony or community plot.

At the Victory Garden Fest you will find:

• Kids’ Zone activities
• Herbal tea tasting and home baking
• Worm farm demonstration
• Information session, hands-on demonstrations and expert advice on preparing and maintaining vegetable gardens for cool weather cropping and preserving summer harvest for the colder months
• seasonally appropriate vegetable transplants for fall, winter and spring harvest

Where: Beban Learning Gardens behind the pickleball courts at Beban Park

When: Saturday July 19th from 10am to 1pm

For more info call 250-816-4769 or email BLG@ncgs.ca

Empowering families to grow more of their own food.

We welcome returns and donations of:

4″ Square pots (sometimes called 3.5″)

Our waterproof plant labels.

Gallon pots are nice but we don’t use them as much.

These items can be dropped off at the Beban Learning Gardens entrance in front of the gate. Volunteers check daily for reusable pots.

We don’t use other plant pots in our production greenhouse. Any pots dropped off which we can’t use go into a free box outside our gates and they are typically picked up by passersby within a week. For a large donation of plant pots we don’t use, we will try to find another organization or grower who can.

We also re-use our labels when possible so return those too!

Below is a photo of the only items that we reuse – gallon pots, 3.5″ – 4″ pots, and our labels.

With the publication of every City of Nanaimo Activity Guide, the Nanaimo Community Gardens Society offers a number of gardening workshops designed to help you increase your horticultural skills. This year we offer a number of new workshops. Check them out below and sign up on the city’s website Activity Guide (nanaimo.ca)  in the Special Interest section.

• Plan Ahead to Save Your Seeds (#138800) – Saving seeds is a great way to save money and develop varieties of plants. It can also help you grow stronger, healthier plants and minimize insect and disease problems. Learn how to deal with cross pollination issues. Cost: $20, Location: Beban Learning Gardens, Date: May 3, 1-3pm Instructor: Connie Kuramoto
• Building a Sheet Mulched Bed (#138804) – Building a new garden? Don’t dig up that sod. Instead, turn it into compost right in place by building a sheet mulched bed. Layering organic materials suppresses weeds, feeds your soil and saves a lot of effort. With some basic materials, these gardens can be planted into right after you build them right on the ground or a raised bed. This will be a hand-on class, so bring your garden gloves, and dress for the weather. Cost: $20, Location: Pine Street Community Garden (271 Pine St), Date: May 10, 1-3pm Instructor: Connie Kuramoto
• Build a Willow Garden Structure (138810) – Make your own 6’ tripod willow garden structure. This beautiful, rustic piece can be used in your garden as a useful structure for growing beans, peas or flowering vines or you can decorate it. See www.willowway.ca for photos of this charming project. This is a hands-on workshop. Just bring your own gloves and make sure your vehicle is large enough to take your project home.  Cost: $60, Location: The Willow Way (13571 Circle 0 Place, Ladysmith), Date: April 12, 9:30am – 12:30pm,  Instructor: Andrew Kent
• Spring Plant Propagation (#138801) – Now is the time to propagate all the spring blooming shrubs and also take cuttings of some annual plants like basil and peppers to increase your numbers of plants more rapidly than if growing by seed. Come learn the basic techniques of propagation and how to adapt them to different plants and different seasons. This is a hands-on class. You will go home with some cuttings and instructions for care of your baby plants. Cost: $20, Location: Beban Learning Gardens, Date: May 31, 1-3pm Instructor: Connie Kuramoto
• Food Security with a Year-Round Garden (#138808) – Spring is the best time to plan food gardens that you can harvest all fall and into winter when local food is scarcer and imported food are more expensive. Once established, a winter garden doesn’t need as much care. It helps preserve topsoil and increases seed saving opportunities while maximizing the use of your garden space. Cost: $20, Location: Pine Street Community Garden (271 Pine St), Date: Jan 7, 1-3pm Instructor: Connie Kuramoto

GLEANING ORIENTATION DATES 2025

Gleaning Program 2025

Since 1993, the Gleaning Program has been harvesting fruit and produce from gardens, farms and back yards in the Nanaimo region. This is among the longest running gleaning programs in the province and is very successful in terms of reducing food waste in the region.

New Gleaners:

If you haven’t been a gleaner for this program before you will need to attend a mandatory safety orientation. The orientations will be held outdoors in the open-air gazebo in the Pine Street Community Garden, behind the Foodshare Centre parking lot at 271 Pine St.  Please attend one of the orientation dates below to join the program. You do not have to pre-register for a session – just show up! Remember to invite any friends or family that want to glean with you as non-registered gleaners are not permitted on picks. Latecomers are disruptive and may miss important information about the program so please be on time. If you cannot be on time, please attend a different session. There will be time to answer all your questions about the program. The orientation session lasts about an hour so dress appropriately to be outdoors for that length of time. You will need to fill out a membership form and submit payment. The membership fee is $25 and payment can be made with cash, cheque, credit card (no debit) or e-transfer.

The dates for 2025 orientations are:

• Saturday May 10, 11am-noon
• Tuesday May 20, 5-6pm
• Saturday June 7, 11am-noon
• Wednesday June 11, 5-6pm

Returning Gleaners:

All gleaners who have attended an orientation within the past 4 years and wish to join the 2024 season are asked to sign up without attending the full orientation again. You will need to fill out a membership form and submit payment. The membership fee is $25 and payment can be made with cash, cheque, credit card (no debit) or e-transfer. This will be done in the gazebo at the Pine Street Community Garden. Contact Lee at 250-816-4769 if you have any questions about if you need to attend an orientation this year. Sign-up sessions for returning gleaners only will be:

• Sunday May 25, 11am-1pm (during a garden work party
• Wednesday May 28, 11am-3pm (during a garden work party)
• Wednesday June 11, 11am-3pm (during a garden work party)
• Sunday June 15^th 11am-1pm (during a garden work party)

Call Lee at 250-816-4769 if you have questions about the program or the orientations. For more information on the program, see our Gleaning Program page with more detailed information. The Gleaning Program – Nanaimo Community Gardens Society

The Gleaning Program 2025 is jointly operated by Nanaimo Foodshare Society and Nanaimo Community Gardens Society and funded by the Province of British Columbia.

(Reposted with Corrections)

This Thanksgiving we would like to send out a big thank you to Cinnabar Farms for the extremely generous donations they made in the Spring of 2024 of bulk manure and supplies for our transplant mix. 

The products were primarily used in our gardens and greenhouse at Beban Learning Gardens.  We happily received bags of Cinnabar Farms Seed Starting mix as well as peat for our transplant mix.   These are used to produce seedlings at our spring transplant sales, and for our Winter Gardening event and sales.   The aim of our sales is to engage and assist gardeners in growing more food in Nanaimo.  We have many experienced gardeners available at our sales to answer gardening, and especially food gardening questions.

The donation of Cinnabar Farms Steer Manure was especially generous this year, so we decided to find a way to be able to share!  The abundance  allowed us to donate more than transplants to the school and social housing gardens we love to support.  We rebagged steer manure into used (always looking for ways to re-use!) Cinnabar Steer Manure bags and included some of these in all the transplant donation pick ups.  

Thank You Cinnabar Farms!

Your generous donation helped us to 

Grow more healthy seedlings,

Support gardeners to grow more food in Nanaimo,

Share soil enriching manure with school gardens and social housing gardens that we support.

Have you collected and dried seed stalks this summer and now are trying to figure out how to extract and clean the seed? Or are you interested in seed saving/seed security, but not sure how to go about the actual process?

Nanaimo Community Gardens Society volunteers are bringing the Farm Folk City Folk Seed Cleaning trailer to the Nanaimo North Public Library parking lot on Sunday, September 29 from 1-3 for drop in seed cleaning.

This is a great opportunity to learn some basics of seed saving for this year or next! As well as speed up some of the more tedious processes.

We’re hoping to share a portion of the seeds cleaned with the Seed Library at VIRL. As well we will be assessing which of the more simple tools Nanaimo Community Gardens Society might be able to make available locally through our proposed Garden/Food Preservation tool library! See you there! #farmfolkcityfolk #vancouverisland #nanaimo #seedsaving #growyourownfood