Grow the Best Garden: Workshop Series

Join us for a series that explores a wide variety of incredibly important gardening topics, from planning and planting, to harvest and seed saving!

Whether you're a novice or an experienced gardener, this series will be certain to offer you tips and tricks, strategies and tools for growing your best garden ever.

This series features 5 two hour long workshops, once per month for five months. You can register for workshops individually or for all 5 in the series for 30% off! Register on this event page for all 5, or see the series outline below to register for individual workshops.

Series Outline:

Grow the Best Garden #1: Plan and Prepare Your Garden (Feb 26 10am-12pm)

Grow the Best Garden #2: Seeding Techniques and Garden Care (March 26 10am-12pm)

Grow the Best Garden #3: Build Incredible Soil (April 23 10am-12pm)

Grow the Best Garden #4: Extending Your Harvest & Saving Seeds (May 28 10am-12pm)

Grow the Best Garden #5: Harvest & Preserve Your Bounty (June 25 10am-12pm)

Instructor Bio: Kayla Siefried (she/her) is a settler in Lekwungen Territory and grew up in Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Territory. Kayla is the steward of the Compost Education Centre demonstration gardens and the curator and main educator of the Adult Education Program. She can be found growing seedlings for plant sales, working with volunteers to keep gardens healthy, flipping hot compost, arranging expert instructors to teach workshops, or out in the community teaching about soil health, organic gardening, and Do-It-Yourself tasks that increase our climate resilience.

Kayla holds a Bachelor of Environmental Studies from the University of Waterloo, and she continued on with practical hands-on permaculture training, gardening and farming internships in various places on Turtle Island and beyond. Kayla is passionate about sharing her knowledge with people young and old through formal and informal education. She’s facilitated youth programs for sustainability all across Canada, Guatemala, and Cambodia, and has a zest for travel and adventure.

Kayla sees the act of growing food and stewarding the soil as one that can heal on many levels. A keen sustainability activist, Kayla finds meaning in advocating for and living an environmentally sustainable life that involves bicycles, healthy food systems, and a good amount of outdoor dancing!

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Proof of COVID vaccination is required if you are attending in-person.

If you are attending a workshop in person, any health and safety protocols will be emailed to you 24 hours in advance. The workshop may be hosted outside, please dress appropriately for all types of weather!

If you are attending a workshop online, zoom meeting details will be emailed to you 1 hour before the workshop starts. If you do not see the email, check your junk folder.

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Accessibility info: The Compost Education Centre site has paths made of gravel (20%), and wood chips (80%). Mobility devices with wheels (such as wheelchairs, walkers etc.) are sometimes difficult to use on site, especially on the gravel paths.

There is a single-stall gender neutral washroom on site. The washroom is not wheelchair accessible and has a small step up from the gravel pathway, and another small step up from the washroom boardwalk.

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Please pre-register for this event.

Customers can request a refund within 30 days of ticket purchase. After 30 days refunds and workshop exchanges are not permitted due to administrative staffing capacity. Please be in touch if you are no longer able to attend but hold a ticket so we can make your space available to someone else.

You can also register for the event by calling our office at 250 386 9676 or via email by contacting office@compost.bc.ca

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The Compost Education Centre is located on unceded and occupied Indigenous territories, specifically the land of the Lekwungen speaking people—the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. These nations are two of many, made up of individuals who have lived within the porous boundaries of what is considered Coast Salish, Nuu-Chah-Nulth and Kwakwa'wakw Territory (Vancouver Island) since time immemorial. At the CEC we seek to respect, honour and continually grow our own understandings of Indigenous rights and history, and to fulfill our responsibilities as settlers, who live and work directly with the land and its complex, vital ecologies and our diverse, evolving communities.

Compost Education Centre memberships get you free workshops, discounts at garden centres around town and more great perks! Sign up or learn more on our website.