CROWS Point Community Garden Work Party - June 13

Sunny weather in Vancouver is always an occasion for celebration, and the weekend of June 12-13 – the first truly beautiful weather since our fickle coastal climate played a colossal game of “Now-You-See-It-Now-You-Don’t” following the May long weekend – the entire city is ready to oblige and make up for lost time. My calendar is a road map of red ink, directing my attention to no less than four spring festivals. I could never possibly fit all this into a scant 48 hours, especially since I’ve already have the core hours of noon until 3:00pm on June 13 reserved for yet another event I don’t plan to miss: a work party at CROWS Point Community Garden.

When last I participated in a CROWS work party, CROWS Point was a community garden in name only: the garden plots, though approved for construction by EYA, didn’t exist yet, plus, despite a year and a half of native plant importation to the western portion of the site, the entire area still showed many signs of derelict origins. And it was raining.

What a difference four months makes! Ostensibly, I am there this day to report on the construction of the tool/work shed. However there is so much else going on, the work party is practically a spring festival unto itself, involving the combined labour of 23 adults, 4 children, 1 dog, and the full realization of a dream for the community that was three years in the making.

Upon arriving on site, I am immediately greeted by Celina, the local visionary initially responsible for CROWS Point taking flight, and I’m given a tour of all the various tasks being done:

Here, there is a women crouched inside a wooden composter like a life-size Jack-in-the-box, albeit one whose eventual escape will be less a spring than a fetid squelch thanks to shoes that are slowly soaking up muddy compost juice. She is staple-gunning a wire mesh inside the composter to keep animals from getting inside.

Over there, some of the members of Club Shed are leveling out the soon-to-be structure’s cinder block and gravel foundation.

Further that way near the sidewalk, some people are on hands and knees scooping up excess foundation gravel from where the City dump truck had unloaded it weeks prior. This task is important because this area will soon become a native flower garden, and the soil conditions need to be just right.

Back a bit closer to where Celina and I stand, in amongst the cherry tree – the original, unauthorized native plant transplantation site – people are weeding; that inglorious obligation of any type of garden. The native trees, ferns and berries have really taken hold, but vigorous invasives like buttercup, Japanese Knotweed, and blackberry still threaten to overrun the space. It will be some years yet before this area is fully restored to the point of self-regulation.


Way over there in the middle of the western “wing” (Celina is still fond of calling it that), sod is being dug up and free City woodchips shoveled down to create a trail that will start on East 24th do a couple of loop de loops around the native plant beds, and exit onto Vanness Avenue.

Also over there, the grass – now two feet high – is being cut by one of two environmentally-friendly methods:


1) an antique push mower that is reportedly “like doing pushups” to operate, and (2) a machete (no word on how that is to operate, however its owner wields it with gusto). Maintaining a pleasing aesthetic on the west side of CROWS Point, which could easily be viewed as “messy” or “unkempt” if the grass was left to tower under the summer sun, is essential to retaining community support for the project.

Finally, past Celina and I over in the eastern wing, people are at their garden plots – thinning plants, relocating plants, and also inserting additional plants. As if the beds didn’t already look like something from the cover of a West Coast Seeds catalogue.

Although I am there mainly to report on the garden’s progress, it’s impossible not to get caught up in the spirit of communal labour, so I bend a knee to pull knotweed in amongst the mowing and trail-building. A short time later, Celina calls a lunch break. It is a carb-elicious potluck lunch of both savoury and sweet croissants and scones graciously donated by Uprising Breads Bakery, as well potato chips, apples, fresh arugula from the garden drizzled with oil and balsamic, and trail mix that I totally high-grade for the chocolate-covered caramels therein (sorry about that, by the way, but whoever brought that mix is brilliant! What a fantastic combination; from now on, my GORP will be GORPC3. Try saying that three times quickly!)

After lunch, Samantha from the EYA provides an educational component to the work party, leading a workshop on winter gardening, which, contrary to some, isn’t what we’re doing at present with our below-seasonal daytime highs, although my month-old, inch-high lettuce begs to differ. Rather, to quote the hand-out Samantha distributes, “Winter gardening is really about summer planting”, generally taking place in late July/early August. Samantha has also brought a collection of overwinter-hardy plants grown by students at EYA’s Youth Garden for CROWS Pointers to plant in their beds. These plants include cauliflower, leeks, red winter lettuce, Asian mustard greens, and cabbage. Leeks being an herb I add to almost all my cooking, I am thrilled to get to take two plants home with me.

By now, my time at CROWS Point is nearing an end. Before departing, I check in on the progress of the shed. Luckily, donations of a pile of cedar from the erstwhile Olympic Alberta House and an entire disassembled shed will much reduce the total work Club Shed has before them. However after having twice set the foundation – the first time inadvertently exceeding the City’s approved dimensions for building without a permit by half a foot on either side – they’re already done a lot.

Now, despite being hard at work, there will be no official shed-raising this day, for they are only just starting to lay the floor. A shed-raising, much like the traditional barn-raisings of the past, is a significant event, and one worthy of its own blog post. Stay tuned!