Sustainability & Friendship through Food
The Food Garden at UBC Botanical Garden is thought to be one of Vancouver’s oldest food demonstration gardens. Its design and development in the 1970’s at a central location in the Garden showed foresight into the local food movement and now has the potential to serve as a focus for urban agriculture. Today, Vancouver supports a vibrant food culture that is quickly becoming a global food and sustainability tourism destination. As the Garden moves towards its 100th year, we are developing programs and infrastructure to engage the public in food systems thinking.
This summer, being particularly sunny and hot, has been spectacular for fruit production. One group of plants that has benefited is the elderberries.
Wow, it’s dry this year! This is a common refrain among visitors to the Botanical Garden.
Summer is a time for flowers. Public displays of flowers help soften and add colour to planters and borders, and make people feel good.
Following on from the “everything is flowering a month ahead of schedule” pattern of the past few months, June 2015 looks to be lock-step…
Because spring arrived early on the West Coast this year (a month ahead of schedule in some cases), the normal discussion of May flowers is somewhat academic.
We’re well on the way to one of the warmest springs in recent memory. A number of plants flowered three to four weeks early.
Notwithstanding an unexpected plunge into freezing temperatures, most spring-flowering plants in the Botanical Garden will be three weeks to a month early this year.
Some people feel that February is a good time for a vacation, given the unreliability of Vancouver’s winter weather.
One of the joys of the Botanical Garden in January is the unexpected fragrance of winter flowers.
