Saturday November 29, 2025 | LANGFORD, BC
Some of you may have heard that the Urban Food Resilience Initiatives Society (UFRIS) is stepping back from hands-on operation of Porcher Park Community Garden (PPCG) in Langford. Our last day there as the Operator will be December 24, 2025.
UFRIS is truly pleased with PPCG — a flagship community garden that the City of Langford now has as a result of the dedicated, professional, insightful and attentive work that Mary P Brooke (UFRIS Executive Lead) provided in designing, building and launching it including creating a community of gardeners.
Up to April of this year, the intended PPCG at 828 Wren Place was fenced bare land; now PPCG is a built-up vibrant food-growing space with 33 growing boxes and plenty of care and attention to healthy experiences for gardeners.
PPCG also donated fresh produce to the Living Edge Westshore food bank to help serve the broader community; the Living Edge program aligns with UFRIS values in that people may participate without ‘qualifying’.
City vision should continue:
UFRIS offers our thanks to the current insightful Langford council and their amazing Parks Department staff who opened the gates for a creative new development in the city for residents who appreciate the opportunity to grow their own fresh produce.
It is also important for urban communities to serve a broad range of interests and aspects of community-living. Langford has been good at providing sports activities and more recently some arts and culture activities and community events. Now bringing the opportunity for the nurturing folk of our communities into an available city service (food-growing spaces) is the right way to go.
UFRIS supports Langford council in their continuing effort to support food-growing capacity for their now more than 50,000 residents.
Apparently there is $10,000 in the Parks budget ifor 2026 for maintaining the physical infrastructure of community gardens; we encourage the City to also create a new staff position for someone to oversee the garden(s) and also maintain the community-development aspect of growing spaces.
Langford up to speed:
UFRIS got the City of Langford rolling with their first community garden — bringing them more in line with other municipalities communities in the Greater Victoria area.
Now it’s up to the City to operate and maintain the garden as a municipal service for the benefit of downsized families that (as a result of housing inaffordability) no longer have ground-space to grow natural food.
UFRIS core mission:
UFRIS believes it is a natural human right to grow food — for reasons of access to the freshest possible produce and having a direct connection to the Earth — not to mention how it can help out with household budgets.
UFRIS continues our work to guide more communities to include (and require of developers) food-growing capacity in all urban infrastructure — both in new developments during the permit process, and in established neighbourhoods.
UFRIS continues other aspects of our core mission to grow natural food in urban spaces. We are also working on food supply as part of disaster response, and a program to help pregnant moms get more fresh nutritious food.
New UFRIS members are welcome (wherever you live in BC). Annual membership is $5. Write to info@urbanfoodresilience.ca.