Cottonwood Community Garden

Community Garden Plant Sale (Vancouver)

Hey there Vancouverites! One of the year’s best plant sales is coming up this weekend at the Cottonwood and Strathcona Community Gardens. I’ll include details below, but first some thoughts and photos from my recent visits to the Cottonwood side of the gardens.

My friend Michelle is a longtime member of the Cottonwood Community Gardens and last week she took me on a tour of the lush and vibrant acreage of those gardens. I’ve been to both Cottonwood and Strathcona before, but embarassingly not for years considering how close they are to my home, bike path and favorite gelato locale. The experience was incredible. Everything you could imagine a thriving community garden might be in terms of both the bounty and diversity of plants as well as the incredible respite the whole place provides despite being right next to an industrial zone. While you’re in the gardens you can easily forget about the warehouses and train tracks only a stones throw away, and I found myself day dreaming of sunny afternoons spent on Gulf Islands, or at the Hollyhock gardens on Cortez, places that usually require a concerted travel effort not a five minute detour off my daily bike route.

Cottonwood was begun in 1991, growing out of the success of the nearby Strathcona Gardens (both gardens border two sides of a big park), which was at full capacity. Both gardens include private plots as well as communal garden spaces for things like a kiwi arbour, common fruit trees, a native plant garden, asian species garden, espalier apple orchard, and shared compost, green house and garden tools. Michelle has some great photos of both gardens up at Flickr, you can see Cottonwood here and Strathcona here, which includes some great historic photos and their espaliered hierloom apples.

I went by Cottonwood on my way to work this morning to take some photos to try to convey the magic and beauty of the place. I woke up this morning with a killer headache (likely thanks to some nasty oil painting I did to prep some fence posts yesterday) and nearly talked myself out of going. Fortunately I didn’t as the only relief I’ve had from that headache today came while I was in the garden taking half an hour to explore with my camera. I’m definitely convinced that making time to take this detour more often would be in my best interest. If you’d like to see the photos they’re up here at Flickr, and I’ve included a few with this post.

Really, my words can’t do this place justice. I am inspired to all kinds of ridiculous heights by these recent visits. Thoughts of tearing up all the grass at our house fill my dreams now, to replace them with winding paths and fruit trees. I’m also having crazy thoughts of trying to find some land in my neighbourhood for just such a project, though I can’t imagine when I’d have the time to get involved with that what with all the gardening to be done at my house already.

Whatever project these visits inspires, I’ll definitely be at the sale on Sunday. Here are the details if you’d like to check it out as well. Unless we’re faced with another scorcher of a weekend, I’ll have my “What Would Nature Do” shirt on if you think you see me and you want to say hi.

Strathcona & Cottonwood Community Gardens Plant Sale & Open House
Prior and Hawks St., Vancouver.
Sunday, July 9th, 10:00am - 2:00pm

Come explore seven acres of unique community garden space in Vancouver.

Find a wide variety of inexpensive perennials, annuals, groundcover, shrubs and more to fill your garden. Purchase delicious honey made by bees right in the gardens.

Participate in free workshops, tours, and live music.

Admission is free, and all sales go towards the non-profit volunteer-run gardens.

Don’t miss exploring this urban oasis and example of sustainability in action.