GLEANING ORIENTATION DATES 2026 Gleaning Program 2026 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: [Continue]
Available from our greenhouse during Beban Learning Garden work parties, Wednesdays 10am- noon, Mondays 4-6 and Saturdays 10-12. Veggie, Herbs and pollinator supporting flower transplants for planting out now! Please be aware that these are cold weather plants that can survive in cool spring temperatures. Our warm weather plants will be sold as the temperature [Continue]
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 [Continue]
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 [Continue]
Each year many pruning workshops are held at the Community Garden sites. These workshops focus on fruit tree pruning to demonstrate practices to restore old trees and increase flower and fruit production. While these classes have been popular for over a decade, NCGS has recently been holding these classes at the Beaufort Park Food Forest [Continue]
We would like to send out a big thank you to Cinnabar Farms for the extremely generous donations they made in early in 2026 of bulk manure and supplies for our transplant mix. The products are primarily used in our gardens and greenhouse at Beban Learning Gardens. We happily received bags of Cinnabar Farms Seed [Continue]
We took some time recently to take out the old tubes of mason bee cocoons and replace them with fresh, new paper tubes. These tubes are where the new female mason bees will lay their eggs, fully provisioned with pollen. These eggs will hatch and the larvae will eat and grow until they are large [Continue]