Monday September 29, 2025 | LANGFORD, BC
by UFRIS Executive Lead Mary P Brooke
We had a relaxing upbeat harvest season event at Porcher Park Community Garden (PPCG) on Sunday September 28.
We celebrated the first year of urban community gardening at PPCG by households in Langford.
These are households who don’t have their own yard space to grow food.
Everyone learned something new about gardening through their first-season experience at PPCG and made new friends.
Sponsors and donors were thanked including RONA (Langford), IslandEarth, GardenWorks Colwood, Slegg Building Materials, Buckerfields and Home Depot.
A first-season overview was delivered by UFRIS Executive Lead Mary Brooke and Langford City Councillor Mary Wagner outlined how the City of Langford supports food security efforts in the community.
Gardeners and supporters contributed their comments and ideas including Patrick and Monika, Paxton, Shirl, Zac and Melanie, Nancy, Susannah and William, Swati, Laure, Vladimir, Belinda, Miriam, and Catherine.
It was a pleasure to have Brian White who leads tourism development at Royal Roads University attend our event on Sunday.
We appreciate the community-level contributions of Kara Middleton who has promoted the use of mulch in our garden boxes this year — especially helpful for the protection of plants in over-winter gardening.
Thank you to everyone who attended and for bringing their contribution to the potluck lunch. Thanks to Shirl for bringing the coffee from Tim Hortons!
GardenWorks Colwood donated a variety of types of bean seeds for next year’s planting.
FED Urban Agriculture donated radish seeds and soil in bags for patio food-growing.
Paxton (gardener in Box 11) brought a donation of squashes for donation to the Living Edge Westshore food market; UFRIS takes fresh veggie donations to Living Edge on Fridays.
Many happy PPCG gardeners renewed their garden box registration. Winter season sign-up is available by emailing to info@urbanfoodresilience.ca .
The prize draw for a bag of Sea Soil was won by Zac and his family.
Pat and Lee and others who were very active in the start-up of the garden season sent their regrets, as did Langford Mayor Scott Goodmanson who was representing Langford at a special event and UFRIS board member Rob Martin who was working on Sunday.
Media coverage: Year-one harvest celebration at Porcher Park Community Garden (Island Social Trends, Sept 29, 2025)