PQB Fruit Tree Project

We’ve had the funding in place for months, but today we got final approval from the co-owners of the property, and we can start digging any time. It’s the Art Farm at the Mac!

It’s going to be a ~4000 square foot food forest garden oasis in downtown Parksville. Accessible raised beds, fruit trees, berries, and a year-round greenhouse will be available for workshops and events, or just to laze away, eat your lunch and feel some dirt between your fingers. All produce will be made available to our neighbours and community partners.

We’ll be looking for volunteers all throughout the building and growing process, so if you have some time, send us an email or sign up on the form below.

We were proud and happy to help support the OHEARTS community garden this past summer. You might have noticed a small garden spring up at the site of the old VIP Motel. The motel was being used as temporary supportive housing for our local vulnerable population. One of our members, who works at the motel, knows that gardening can be a great, therapeutic activity, and can bring people together across any barrier.

Thanks to their initiative, and the support of the OHEARTS board, we helped build a community garden and suppored the residents with supplies, seedlings and support throughout the spring and summer months.

The garden had a tremendous impact on the guests and their families, and also on the public perception of the facility. It was referenced many times in council chambers and social media as a shining example of a positive impact on a community. Wherever Ocean Place finds itself after March 31, a garden should always be a priority.

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Celebrating new growth for the 2022 season.

We’ve been busy over the winter planning for our 2022 season, fighting food insecurity in Oceanside and Parksville / Qualicum.

Our newest project has come in partnership with Second Harvest. Since February, we’ve been preparing salads and sandwiches for distribution to the local Ohearts supportive shelter, as well as a few seniors complexes up Moilliet St., and some individual families around town. We’re supporting local farmers and grocery stores, and making 80+ sandwiches and over 40 salads every week for some of our food insecure neighbours. It’s been a great project for us. If you know of someone who could benefit from this program, Let us know and we’ll see if we can accommodate them.

We’re also planting seedlings every week for distribution to our local schools, agencies and neighbours, and we’ll be starting to look to our gleaning program for the summer.

Volunteer Opportunity – School Garden summer maintenance – the Ballenas / PASS Woodwinds School Garden.

The students have put a lot of time and effort into developing and planting their school garden. Now it needs some simple maintenance through the summer months. We’ll be responsible for weeding, watering, harvesting and caring for the school garden from the end of June till the first week of September. I expect it will only take an hour or two, a couple times a week. Many hands will make light work.

It’s quite a nice, full garden, with plenty of plantings of raspberries, greens, squash, potatoes, garlic, tomatoes, beans, you name it. The staff and kids have done a great job in building it, and we’re glad to be able to help care for it and get it ready for the fall season.

Now that gardening season is truly upon us, we’re happy to use the Community Pantry as a seedlings exchange. We’re dropping off various seeds and seedlings every week for neighbours to use in their own gardens. If you have any extras, please consider bringing some of yours to exchange. #foodisfree

Here it is, our new and improved Moilliet St. Community Pantry, located at 138 Moilliet St. in Parksville. Thanks to the home’s resident, Gaylene,, we were able to implement the idea last April 2020 as a way to share seedlings and garden produce with our Parksville neighbours. Our intention was to encourage more home-gardening and self-sufficiency, as well as just spreading a little kindness in a new, pandemic world. It grew over the summer and kept going through the winter months, with donations of canned goods and other food items.

We built the new stand with a grant from the PQB Foundation, and already it’s been embraced by members of the neighbourhood, who’ve been regularly donating food and pantry items.

Last year we shared over 1000 vegetable and greens seedlings, there, and many pounds of garden produce and local fruit, gleaned from neighbourhood trees. This year we hope to double that, or more.

Want to donate your produce, canned goods, seeds or seedlings? Generally you can just drop them off at the property at 138 Moilliet St. Otherwise, send an email to info@pqbfruit.org or Facebook messenger.

Last Tuesday we were notified that our Neighbourhood Small Grant for the Moilliet Street Pantry was approved. It will allow us to keep veggies out of the sun and canned goods out of the rain. We hope to have it out before Christmas to help share a little gratitude. Expect it to look a little something like this

Join Us! Become a volunteer or member of the PQB Fruit Tree Project

Sign up for new volunteer opportunities coming up in for this harvest season, including summer school garden maintenance and harvesting, and fruit tree harvests.

Our goal is to work with School District 69 to help increase learning spaces and opportunities on school campuses using greenhouses, hydroponics, and traditional gardens and food forests. We aim to build and facilitate garden programs in our schools, and plant fruit trees on school grounds with the produce to be used by the students and their families. Email pqbfruit@gmail.com if you think this project is right for your child’s school.

In May 2020 we received a Neighbourhood Emergency Response Grant to build and maintain a hydroponic organic greens system to grow kale, lettuce and Swiss chard for one of Parksville’s community organizations, Forward House. Thanks to Surly Dan’s Urban Farm and his expertise, we’ve been dropping off bins of organic food to the group ever since.

Forward House is a resource for young people with mental health challenges, located in Parksville. They offer support and safety to many local clients, including offering meals and fellowship to these somewhat vulnerable citizens.