This summer was another productive season at the gardens for growing food, learning new skills, and building community in green spaces. Check out these updates from food networks across the city and how they steward their unique gardens.
Norquay Food Forest (stewarded by Renfrew Collingwood Food Justice)
The Norquay Community Food Forest is both a green space and a learning garden. Designed with Indigenous ecological knowledge in mind, it is home to a variety of local fruit trees, nut trees, berries, and medicinal plants that support community gatherings, workshops, and events! Native species include Skunk Cabbage, Camas, and Salmonberries. Plants are intentionally arranged to support symbiotic relationships, for example, roses grow beneath elderberry bushes and hazelnuts grow against plum trees, which mimics the way these plants naturally grow in a forest. With its dense canopy, this mini forest also provides food and shelter for pollinators, birds, and other wildlife as well as community gathering space for humans with its benches, chairs and tire swing.
Trout Lake Medicine Wheel Garden (stewarded by Cedar Cottage Food Network)
The Medicine Wheel Garden located in John Hendry (Trout Lake) Park was planted in 2017 by the Cedar Cottage Food Network in partnership with the Wild Salmon Caravan project. Currently stewarded by the Public Health Association of BC’s Community Garden Roots in partnership with Lu’Ma Medical Society, this Indigenous focused garden significantly expanded this past summer that enhancing its capacity for growing traditional foods and medicines and increase culturally focused garden access space for education, community building and wellness for Indigenous people in East Vancouver. Seasonal workshops facilitated by Indigenous educators focus on medicine-making practices, Indigenous food systems, land-stewardship, and more.
Grandview Woodland Food Connection Britannia School Gardens
The Britannia School Gardens program managed through the Grandview Woodland Food Connection (GWFC) continues to grow. This large school garden program, with four garden areas totaling over 10,000 sq ft. includes the šxʷqʷeləwən ct (One heart, one mind) garden surrounding the Carving Pavilion, full of Indigenous plants that have cultural, medicinal, household, and food uses, the Nexways wa lh7á ̓ y̓nexw (Transformed Life) Garden that provides learning and growing space for students and community members as well as community plots for our neighbours. They also steward the ¿uuqinak’uuh Grandview Elementary School Garden, where land-based education helps students grow and flourish. In 2025, the GWFC worked with over 410 students in 26 classes at Britannia Elementary, Britannia Secondary, and Grandview Elementary delivering 158 garden lessons and with a strong focus on Indigenous food systems knowledge sharing and learning.
Clinton Park (stewarded by Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House)
This garden demonstrates purposeful approaches to decolonization that provides educational workshops on location. One memorable workshop was led by Brenda, an indigenous knowledge keeper, who taught us about harvesting sweet grass and its traditional medicinal use, calming our spirits as we listened to her stories and then the braiding began. Always treat sweetgrass like you would your grandmother’s hair. Mother Earth is so good to us and has always been there for us and still is. Always has, always will be.
Volunteers demonstrated how to transform local backyard apples into delicious snacks. They demonstrated how to slice it and place them in a dehydrator and learned not just about dehydrating apples but just about any other vegetable on the planet that can be dehydrated, anything from potatoes, mushrooms, corn and kale too! The ongoing care for our community garden involved children planting seeds and eagerly watching as they grew, bringing joy and surprises to our weekly visits.
Village Vancouver Gardens
Kits Community Centre Community Garden (Village Vancouver and Westside Neighbourhood Food Network)
Now in our 12th year, we garden collaboratively (i.e. no private plots, only shared spaces) at weekly work parties. We like to grow annual and perennial veggies, herbs, berries, and flowers, and also have several fruit trees. We installed new aluminum raised beds this summer and reinstalled our native plant vertical garden. The garden is part of the Westside Permaculture Corridor.
Robson and Pender Gardens ((Village Vancouver and West End Neighbourhood Food Network)
We’re a diverse group of gardeners, who’ve been growing together at weekly work parties for several years. Makiko, our garden coordinator, is incredibly knowledgeable about gardening, so even though we don’t have a lot of space, we enjoy a high yield. This year we started a pilot project growing red russian kale to save seeds for our community seed libraries, which can be found at most VPL branches and elsewhere around the city.
Aberthau Collaborative Permaculture Garden (Village Vancouver and Westside Neighbourhood Food Network)
We started in 2015, and expanded the garden by about 70% 3 years ago. Located in a beautiful large field, we garden together at weekend work parties and at other times, with an emphasis mainly on perennial and native plants…The garden includes a vertical garden, an herb spiral, and a picnic area. When the weather’s nice, we host organic gardening workshops and Permaculture Vancouver Meetups, and we’re also part of the Westside Permaculture Corridor. We welcome gardeners of all gardening abilities, including beginners!
Riley Park Learning Garden (stewarded by Little Mountain Neighbourhood House Food Hub)
Located in Riley Park to the north of the Field House, there is a space we call “Ed’s Garden,” named after long-time resident Ed Shum, who stewarded the space for over 40 years. After Ed retired from the garden, LMNH stepped in to redevelop the space to be more accessible and inclusive.
Over the past two years, community members have come out to update the garden design; connect with groups working in the environmental and nature-based education space; move soil; stake out the walkway, gathering space, and accessible beds; build planter boxes; have the garden be accepted as a Vancouver Master Gardeners project; and organize a regular series of work parties.
The power to gather and co-create the Learning Garden is inspiring as we build community connections, strengthen our food security, and honour the Musqueam Nation.
Hastings Community Centre Learning Garden (stewarded by Hastings-Sunrise Community Food Network)
The Hastings Community Centre Learning Garden is home to four raised vegetable beds, numerous fruit trees and berry bushes, and many other native & non-native plant species. In our 2,800 sq. ft. garden we grow plants for medicine, food, education, and to support our pollinators and other native and beneficial insects. Stop by to sample some raspberries or just relax under the pergola.
We run year-round programs in our garden and our commercial kitchen, providing fun, uniting, and educational classes to everyone from toddlers to seniors for free or at a low cost. Our goal is to build a stronger, healthier community through food.
Looking to volunteer at a garden? Contact us at info@vancouverfoodnetworks.com and we can direct you to the garden nearest you!