Quadra Cedar Hill Community Association

Quadra Cedar Hill Community Association

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Climate Action

GoByBike Week 2025 kicks off May 30

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Capital Bike’s GoByBike Week 2025, organized in partnership with Greater Victoria communities, will have 14 “Celebration Stations” arranged across the CRD for riders to visit and add a stamp to their passport.  At these stations, cyclists will be offered free food, drinks and prizes, and the chance to meet and chat with other riders.  Evidently last year’s GoByBike events saw 50,000 British Columbians participate, logging nearly 2.5 million kilometres, says Capital Bike’s community manager, Britt Burnham.  She adds that, “If we had driven that distance instead, it would have added 539,683 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions to our atmosphere. That’s roughly the equivalent of 126 gas-powered cars, driven for an entire year.”  In honour of GoByBike Week, BC Transit is also offering free rides to cyclists next week.

Safe cycling, everyone!

Why pollinators matter

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Why Pollinators Matter

One in every three bites of food you eat depends on a pollinator.

Pollinators – like bees, butterflies, birds, bats and even moths – play a vital role in our ecosystems and food production.  Here on southern Vancouver Island, over 200 native bee species thrive, along with many other pollinating friends.  Without them, most flowering plants couldn’t reproduce.  That means fewer fruits, vegetables and healthy habitats for us all.

The Bigger Picture

Healthy ecosystems depend on pollinators.  They help clean the air, stabilize soil, support wildlife and provide shelter during extreme weather.

What We’re Doing.    

As part of a citizen science project with UVic Geography students, we began by mapping pollinator gardens throughout our community.  Now we are building pollinator corridors – we’ve prepared and planted two sites on Astoria Street at Willerton.

What is a pollinator corridor?  It is a pesticide-free pathway of native plants that helps pollinators move between habitats, especially in urban areas.

How You Can Help

You don’t need a large yard to make a difference.  Every balcony, boulevard or back yard can become part of the network.

Tips to Get Started

  • plant native species – native plants support more species than non-native ornamentals
  • grow food?  add hedgerows!  They attract birds and insects that eat pests
  • grow flowers?  Interplant native bulbs.  They’re often deer-resistant and drought-tolerant
  • provide water and bloom variety – choose plants that flower throughout the growing season
  • skip the tidy-up – bare soil, dried stalks and leaf litter create homes for pollinators
  • say not to pesticides – even treated plants can harm pollinators
  • check out Habitat Acquisition Trust’s ‘Gardening with Nature‘

Spotlight:  Garry Oak Ecosystems

Garry Oak ecosystems are the most biodiverse native ecosystems in Canada, and they’re right in our back yards – but less than 5% of their original habitat remains.

These ecosystems support:

  • 800 insect and mite species
  • 104 bird species
  • dozens of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and many species at risk

If you have Garry Oaks, let the leaf litter lie – endangered species like the Propertius Duskywing butterfly depend on it

Community in Action

Our neighbours are making a difference!  In 2023, Friends of Cedar Hill Park volunteered over 1400 hours with Saanich’s Pulling Together program removing invasive species and planting natives along the Cedar Hill Park chip trail – benefiting pollinators and biodiversity for future generations.

Join the Pollinator Movement

Whether you have a garden, balcony or boulevard, you can help.

  • get involved with QCHCA
  • start your own native planting
  • help us expand the pollinator corridor

For more information and/or to find out how about volunteer opportunities, email us at qchca3003@gmail.com

Share your garden – send us a photo to qchca3003@gmail.com

WHAT’S CHUFF ? – 2024 Year in Review

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CHUFF sprouted April 2022 as an initiative of our community association’s Climate Action group. In Saanich, food and our food systems are the third greatest contributor to carbon emissions after transportation and buildings. Food waste plays a significant role. We all eat, and we each have the power to be part of the solution.  CHUFF’s goal is to encourage our neighbours to grow more food, consume more local foods, eat more of what is in-season, and to stop wasting food. Luckily for us, on southern Vancouver Island we can grow and purchase good, locally-grown food year round. CHUFF members gather most months, on a Sunday morning. Here is some of what CHUFF offered in its third year, 2024. New members welcome

January 2024
CHUFFians greeted the new year and each other with our very own Social Seed Swap. Most seeds were saved from member’s own gardens, the intent being to share locally-successful and favorite varieties.

January / February 2024
A handful of able volunteers organized CHUFF’S 2 ND EAT LOCAL Winter Recipe Contest open this year to all Saanich residents. Contest rules required that 75% of ingredients be BC grown produce, and in-season. The contest attracted 55 fabulous recipes and was featured in the T-C by food columnist Eric Akis. 1 st place prize (by random draw) went to Saanich resident Nancy D’s delicious Hungarian Mushroom Soup. See all contest recipes here qchca.org/winter-veggie-recipes/

In April
Members gathered to troubleshoot a challenging, food-on-a-budget grow site. Ashlie’s backyard has a gigantic glacially-scoured rocky outcropping right in the middle of it. While her initial intent was to create habitat for pollinators she soon decided that that much work should produce people food too. Despite pests, pernicious weeds, too much heat, and zero soil she is creating a food forest with child-friendly play places throughout, a resilient garden for a working mom that won’t be too time-consuming or expensive to maintain.

May
Paige and Tommy of Fullmoon Farmstand on Maplewood opened their backyard to CHUFF members and the public for the community association’s Lower Your Carbon Footprint Neighbourhood Tour. Paige works with HAT (Habitat Acquisition Trust) and Tommy with Satin Flower Nursery and their garden exemplifies the benefits of biodiversity. As they say: We have tended to and expanded our garden on this rental property for the last 4 years. Here we produce 75% of the vegetables we consume in summer, plus enough to give away to family and friends and to sell at our farmstand. About half the backyard garden is devoted to vegetables; half the yard is lawn for the dogs and backyard hangouts, with the perimeters being native plants for pollinators and biodiversity. About 50 QCH neighbours took advantage of the all day tour. Thanks Paige & Tommy!

June
An early summer visit to Judy & Ian’s garden carved out of a blackberry thicket along the Galloping Goose Trail – surely ironic for food growers who describe themselves as aspirationally lazy gardeners!

Here the focus was strategies for maximum yield with minimum effort, benefits to co-growing with family members or neighbours whose garden plots are nearby but separate, and balancing living next to a wildlife sanctuary with the desire for a reasonably productive garden.

CHUFF-ians gloried in Judy’s garden art and re-named Ian the McGiver of Growers for his talent in fashioning tool solutions from found objects.

September
The highlight of 2024 was CHUFF’s tour to ALM Farm; Full Circle Seeds in Sooke! Enthralling … Inspiring … I had no idea what’s required to be a certified organic farm … I want to go back to volunteer … Mary-Alice is amazing! were some of the comments shared.

Buckwheat in full bloom, seeded mere weeks earlier as a green manure /cover crop following potato harvest.

Established 30-plus years ago, ALM Farm offered the South Island’s first organic CSA box program which continues today. Many of our region’s organic farmers got their start with Mary-Alice via ALM’s on-farm apprenticeship program. “Townies’ can find ALM produce at the Moss Street Market every Saturday.

November

Undaunted by October rain, CHUFF’s annual Harvest Potluck Lunch moved indoors a month later. Always a delicious social event, members bring a dish concocted from their own garden produce. A treat this year was taste testing Gregor’s sparkling plum cider! For dessert, the CHUFF pie-guys provided a choice of wild-foraged blueberry, or orchard apple pie!

Appreciating that one in every three bites of foods we eat is reliant on pollinators, after our Harvest Potluck lunch we toured the Community Association’s latest climate action – an in-progress, native plants for pollinators boulevard garden, Astoria Street at Willerton.

Quadra Cedar Hill Urban Food Farmers, or CHUFF, gathers on a Sunday morning most months in the growing seasons. Activities reflect what garners the support of our members. New members welcome, especially new-to-food growing families. Contact qchca.chuff@gmail.com

A pollinator garden is taking shape on Astoria

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In early October, work on two pollinator-friendly gardens began on the boulevards on the north and south side of Astoria at Willerton.  The project is being led by Susan Morrow, a member of QCHCA’s Climate Action group.  The photos are from our first work party building up soil for planting.  Two methods were used.  In one, we laid a thick layer of cardboard and damped it down.  This was followed by a layer of alfalfa and a layer of straw, then strewn with blood and bone meal before being covered with a layer of good top soil.  The other method starts with a layer of heavy cardboard, wetted down and then covered with several inches of leaf mulch before the top soil is applied.  We have information sheets available on how this is done – email us at qchca3003@gmail.com.   We will sow some seeds in each bed in the fall but you there won’t be much to see until spring!

Quadra Cedar Hill Community Association’s Climate Action group has been working on a pollinator initiative over the past couple of years, beginning with a pollinator walk and talk.  This was followed by three events, supported by UVic students from a Geography 380 class, who helped teach us how to use Open Green Map to indicate where pollinator-friendly plants and trees were in our neighbourhood, ideally indigenous ones as they support the pollinators – bees, butterflies, wasps, moths, beetles, birds and bats – that live in or pass through our area.

 

Going Greener Neighbourhood Tour – Sun., April 28

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On Sunday April 28th, the QCHCA Climate Action group will host the second annual Going Greener Neighbourhood Tour from 10 to 3 pm. The houses on the tour will be primarily on or near Astoria, between Maplewood Ave and Cedar Hill Park.

The properties will have information and demonstrations on heat pumps, solar energy, insulation, EVs and e-bikes, a pollinator garden and more.  Learn about how we can reduce our carbon footprint and be inspired by the action taken by folks in our neighbourhood. SOLAR PANELS will be at 1278 Astoria St, INSULATION at 1284 Astoria St, FOOD GROWING at 3408 Maplewood, HEAT PUMPS at 3515 James Hts, and EV CARS AND BIKES at the Cedar Hill Rec. Centre. See poster for details.  Hope to see you there!

Saanich ‘Neighbour-to-neighbour’ (N2N) grants available

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Help your neighbourhood become more connected and resilient.

Through the Neighbour to Neighbour Resilience Initiative (N2N) pilot, the District of Saanich supports residents’ projects to address emergency preparedness, climate action, and caring for nature at a neighbourhood scale.

Your neighbourhood group can access a $500 community grant.

  1. If you already have an idea in mind, you can apply for the grant right away.  OR
  2. If you don’t have a project idea already, you can bring a neighbourhood group together for a workshop series with Saanich staff to help you and your neighbours get to know each other and collaboratively design a project.

Applications will be reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis starting January 1st of each year and are provided based on eligibility, as funds last. It is not a competitive funding process.

The findings of the pilot will be used to amend and improve the program for subsequent years.

To learn more, register for the info session on April 30th at 7pm at Cedar Hill Recreation Centre.

Help us map pollinator-friendly plants in our neighbourhood!

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Quadra Cedar Hill Community Association’s Climate Action group has been working on a pollinator initiative over the past couple of years, beginning with a pollinator walk and talk.  This was followed by three events, supported by UVic students from a Geography 380 class, who helped teach us how to use Open Green Map to indicate where pollinator-friendly plants and trees were in our neighbourhood, ideally indigenous ones as they support the pollinators that live in or pass through our area.

Special thanks to the students in the Spring 2023 class – Lindsay Worden, Jordan Monahan, Keith Buckley and Estela Majano – who created and gave us this excellent tutorial  and other support materials!!!  Also, very special thanks to Maleea Acker and Ken Josephson who teach this amazing Community Mapping course!!

WHAT’S CHUFF? Year 2 in Review

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CHUFF Definition 

Verb to please or delight, British slang

Noun Cedar Hill Urban Food Farmers. A community of experienced and wanna-be backyard food growers, sharing skills and experience while contributing to climate solutions. 

Adjective She was chuffed to share her homegrown broccoli with her neighbours

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CHUFF sprouted April 2022 as an initiative of our community association’s Climate Action group. The goal? To help reduce Saanich’s carbon and ecological footprint by encouraging  neighbours to grow and consume more local food, year round. Why? Because our food system is responsible for 30% of carbon emissions, globally. And, lucky us, with a backyard plot or a number of pots, in Quadra Cedar Hill we can grow good food year round. What we eat, where it’s sourced, and reduced food waste does make a difference!

In its first year 20 growers gathered one Sunday morning a month in members’ gardens to share skills and experience. We swapped plant starts, held Taste Testings, learned best composting practices, and oohed and aahed over each other’s summer tomatoes and spring sprouting broccoli.

As CHUFF’S second year now winds down, membership has doubled with an increasing number of first-time food growers. Here is some of what CHUFF accomplished in 2023. 

January / February  Eat Local – Winter Salad Recipe Contest 

CHUFF challenged QCH-area residents to submit winter salad recipes containing 75% home- or  locally-grown ingredients . Times-Colonist food columnist Eric Akis featured the contest in an article on winter produce available in our region. By random draw three contest entrants won a selection of Full Circle seeds, and a Root Cellar gift certificate. Thank you sponsors!   

Find 25 inspiring Eat Local Winter Salad recipes at https://qchca.org/winter-salad-contest-recipes/

February Fruit tree pruning demonstration hosted by Lifecycles at Welland Community Orchard.

April Building Organic Soil with speaker Christina Cook, Gaia College & Pacific Horticulture College.

April Special Event Two CHUFF members opened their food growing gardens to the public as part of QCH Climate Action group’s Climate Friendly Solutions Homes & Gardens tour. 

May CHUFF member Garden Tour and demonstration: choosing & installing a programmable irrigation system.

June Member tour of Capital City Allotment Gardens. 

June CHUFF members seed winter vegetables for a public plant giveaway, slated for mid-August. 

July CHUFF member Garden Tour. Theme: growing citrus.

July Special Neighbourhood Event Garden Tour & Tea by invitation to non-CHUFF neighbours.

August CHUFF member Garden Tour. Theme: growing teas. 2nd annual Taste Testing the Best from our Gardens.

August Special Public Event Grow Your Own Winter Veg Plant Giveaway. 

Invited QCHCA residents to take hundreds of free brussels sprout, spring broccoli and kale seedlings, fertilizer, containers as needed, and in-depth growing instructions (posted QCHCA CHUFF website). 30 neighbours participated. 17 are growing their own, for the first time!

September Member tour Victoria Compost Education Centre.

October Member Garden Tour & 2nd Annual CHUFF Harvest Potluck. 

November  New grower check-in. CHUFF invites those growers who benefited from August’s Winter Veg Plant Giveaway to send in questions and photos. Are your veg thriving? Only surviving? Experienced grower responds with advice via CHUFF FB and email. 

Next in November CHUFF’s 2nd annual Member Survey to inform programming for 2024. 

When members are asked why you choose to grow food: 

91% of CHUFF survey respondents say “home-grown is better quality” and “to counter climate change.” 

For 73% benefits include “it gets me active / outdoors” and contributes to my “food self-sufficiency.” 

65% said they grow their own food to “save money.”

Additional comments:  

I can grow things that are often hard to find in the stores, or are exorbitantly expensive. 

It’s my meditation and exercise. To nurture something and watch it grow is exciting! 

If you live in the Quadra Cedar Hill Community Association catchment area, grow your own or would like to start, and are interested in joining friendly neighbourhood CHUFF, email: qchca.chuff@gmail.com



Climate-friendly solutions home and garden tour

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A first-ever for QCHCA and its Climate Action group – a ‘Going Greener’ home and gardens tour.  Tour the homes of neighbours who’ve ‘gone greener’ to see and learn about heat pumps; solar; retrofitting and radiant heat; EVs, hybrids and E-bikes; and food grower gardens.

WHEN:  Saturday, April 29 from 10am – 4pm

WHERE:  six neighbourhood sites (see map and tour times for each site)

Space is limited so registration is encouraged.  To register, email qchca3003@gmail.com and put “Going Greener tour” in the subject line.

We will also have a booth at Saanich’s Earth Day event at Municipal Hall on Saturday, April 22 between 11- 3.

Hope to see you at one or all of the sites on the 29th!  It’s free, fun, informative and open to all!

Quadra Cedar Hill Community Association