Quadra Cedar Hill Community Association

Quadra Cedar Hill Community Association

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Climate Action

Naturescaping

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From lawn to naturescaped yard!
 
Naturescaping is a program that creates, maintains, and enhances wildlife habitat and native biodiversity in outdoor spaces.
 
Naturescaping encourages diversity, layers, and edges by growing native plants in your outdoor spaces and in the re-design of wildlife friendly landscapes.
 
Naturescaping is a fun and truly impactful way to bring the joy of nature right to your backyard! While taking care of nature, you are also caring for yourself, your family, and your community.
 
Find out more about Saanich’s Naturescape Program at  https://www.saanich.ca/EN/main/community/natural-environment/naturescape-program.html

El Niño and weather this Summer and coming Fall & Winter

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El Niño won’t affect Island weather this Summer, but a Warmer winter is coming.
 
Weather forecasts are predicting El Niño won’t dramatically affect Island weather this Summer, but Winter will be warmer than normal and affect snowpack and water levels in reservoirs in 2027.
 
“El Niño” is not an official classification, but even at a moderate level, this naturally occurring climate pattern can contribute to more severe weather events. El Niños can be weak, moderate, strong, or very strong.
 
El Niño is a phase of a recurring climate pattern known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). It causes warmer ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific, which can alter the weather we experience in BC.
 
The prediction is for the lower Island to see more precipitation than normal in June and July (by a few mm) with El Niño expected to affect our region later in the year with a warmer and drier Winter.
 
Information gathered from Capital Daily. Photo courtesy of James MacDonald / Capital Daily.

Information on Adapting, Managing and Planning for Extreme Heat

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The Capital Regional District (CRD) has set up a portal to provide information on adapting, managing and planning for extreme heat.
 
The Portal contains information and maps that will help residents explore and understand the capital region’s vulnerability and exposure to extreme heat.  Find information at https://heat.prepareyourself.ca/
 
The interactive Regional Heat Map highlights areas vulnerable to extreme heat. Explore temperature maps from the 2021 extreme heat event at https://heat.prepareyourself.ca/pages/regional-heat-map
 
Find ways to prepare for an extreme heat event (similar to the one we had in 2021) at https://www.prepareyourself.ca/hazards-our-region/extreme-heat

The Tale of a Fallen Oak Branch …

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From the Cedar Hill Urban Food Farmer’s (CHUFF) team.
A branch fell off your oak tree last Fall. It’s been on the ground for at least six months. You’ve been meaning to haul it to the Saanich yard.
 
In that time, it’s become an apartment building of sorts.
 
Year one: Fungi colonize the exposed wood. You can see the first brackets forming on the bark — small, shelf-like growths that are breaking down the lignin and cellulose inside. The branch is getting softer.
 
By year two or three: Beetle larvae have tunneled into the softened wood. Their galleries — winding channels the width of a pencil lead — aerate the interior. Woodpeckers find the branch and drill into it to extract the larvae.
 
By year five: A salamander has moved into one of the beetle galleries. She lives in the damp, rotting wood and hunts pill bugs, mites, and springtails on the surface. The branch is now a hunting ground and a shelter.
 
By year ten: The branch is mostly soil. The fungi, the beetles, the salamander, the woodpecker — they converted a fallen limb into nutrients that are feeding the tree it fell from.
 
🌿 A fallen branch is not debris — it’s a building under construction
🌿 If it’s not blocking a path, leave it where it fell
🌿 The fungi that colonize it aren’t disease — they’re decomposers doing their job
🌿 One fallen branch can support more than thirty species over its lifetime

Draft 2026 Climate Plan Update & Survey

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The District of Saanich is inviting residents to read the DRAFT 2026 Climate Plan and share feedback before the final plan goes to Council.
 
The draft Plan is an update of the existing 2020 Climate Plan and outlines the pathway and actions to meet the District’s goals of reducing community GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 and to net zero by 2050, achieving 100% renewable energy, and improving community resilience. It includes 23 strategies and 99 actions across six focus areas.
 
Find the Draft 2026 Climate Plan Update at https://www.saanich.ca/assets/Community/Documents/Planning/sustainability/Draft%202026%20Climate%20Plan.pdf
 
Provide your feedback by completing the survey – through HelloSaanich – at https://hello.saanich.ca/en/projects/climate-plan-update
 
The survey is open until May 22, 2026 at Noon.
 
All survey responses will be reviewed and used alongside other inputs to inform the final 2026 Climate Plan.

Container Gardening with Native Plants Workshop – April 28

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There’s no space too small to have a positive impact on local biodiversity.

This workshop will discuss the benefits and importance of planting native species – even at a smaller scale.  Included in the session will be a variety of examples as well as a demonstration for making your own pollinator container gardens followed by a Q&A session.

This is a FREE session, open to all and timed perfectly to help you get ready for the season.

Find more information and register at https://anc.ca.apm.activecommunities.com/saanich/activity/search/detail/147668

While no space is too small to grow native plants – there are a limited number of spaces available in this workshop.

Date:  Tuesday, April 28, 2006

Time:  7pm to 8:30pm

Venue:  Cedar Hill Rec Centre (Art Room #2)

WHAT’S CHUFF – 2025 Year in Review

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2025 marked the 4th year of this kindly community of food growing friends in our Quadra Cedar Hill neighbourhood.  CHUFF – the Cedar Hill Urban Food Farmers – 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.  CHUFF’s goal is to encourage our neighbours to grow more food, consume more local foods, eat more of what’s in season, and prevent wasting food.  Luckily for us, on southern Vancouver Island we can grow and purchase good, locally grown food year round and this contributes to a climate solution.  CHUFF members gather most months of the year on Sunday mornings.  Here are some of what CHUFF offered in its 4th year of operation.  Curious about what’s coming in 2026?  New Quadra Cedar Hill members are always welcome!  Get in touch with an email to qchca.chuff@gmail.com

January 2025

Extending the variety of nutritious foods we grow in winter was our goal at this evening workshop on How to Grow Microgreens and Sprouts led by the Compost Education Centre’s delightful Kayla.  Here we are gathered in CEC’s warm ‘n cosy straw bale learning centre. Participant comments: Great workshop. Really enjoyed it. I learned lots. Will definitely try growing sprouts. Workshop was good. I'm motivated now! Kayla was lovely. Great to see CHUFF friends again.

If you are new to food growing, we heartily recommend taking one of the Compost Education Centre’s many workshops.  Or, join CHUFF!

March 2025

CHUFF-ians braved a downpour for our annual Seed Swap and tour of our host’s garden.

Lisa was looking for advice on how to maximize production in a backyard which is semi-shaded by Garry Oaks.  Getting into each other’s gardens to share members’ years of experience, in differing grow situations, is one of the benefits that keeps CHUFF growers engaged.

Lisa’s comment on the day: I feel very fortunate to have had so many lovely folks who love to grow food come to our garden.

 

May 2025

Late in May CHUFF hosted its first ever, super successful Garden Tour & Plant Giveaway.  This event was open to the public!  Dubbed ‘It’s Not Too Late to Plant’, the tour and veggie starts giveaway attracted over 50 Quadra Cedar Hill neighbours.  Karen’s Wicklow Village Plant & Seed stand overflowed with free vegetable starts and seeds, and even some native pollinators.  All thanks to CHUFF members who started way back in March seeding dozens and dozens and dozens of extra tomatoes, peas, celery, zucchini and much more – all for the giveaway.

One lovely story comes from Marian who brought her granddaughter who was visiting from out of town.  The youngster took home a cucumber seedling in a 4 inch pot, her first experience with trying to grow food.  Later that summer Marian shared this photo of her very proud granddaughter with her Gigantic Cuke.  Wow!  Congratulations to this new generation food grower.

Watch for CHUFF’s 2nd annual public Garden Tour & Giveaway coming late May 2026.

June 2025

Members returned to Jeannette and Gavin’s newly renovated food, herb, and fruit garden to learn what they’d decided to change things up after many years growing in the same location, and why.  A family of scientists who are always experimenting, these folks seek maximum calories for a vegetarian diet and have much knowledge to share.

August 2025

Each late summer or early autumn CHUFF hosts Taste Testing Our Garden’s Best. Members bring their favorite ‘fruits of the season’ for everyone to taste-test. There is usually a plethora of tomato varieties for instance, and when a particular favorite is found the grower will usually save seeds for others to plant next year. Folks share preserved foods too – we dipped into fig chutney with goat cheese, a new pesto recipe, and even a lightly-smoked tomato sauce.Eric’s biggest ever garlic was the 2025 show stopper with a circumference of 16.5cm and weighing in at 870 grams. Wow!

October 2025

October marks our annual Harvest Potluck and member garden tour.  Not all CHUFF members have expansive backyards and folks were impressed by how much food Delma grows in pots on a sunny south facing balcony.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As for the potluck, urban farmers know not only how to grow good food but also how to cook it! What better dish to celebrate another great growing season than strawberry rhubarb pie?

November 2025

CHUFF closed out the 2025 season with a member survey, asking What folks want to learn and share, next year? This reflecting CHUFF’s credo: our activities will reflect what engenders the interest of members.

Highlights to watch for in 2026 include: a Beginner’s Garden “Advice Please” tour; a farm visit featuring native pollinator plants & indigenous medicinals; the ever-popular Taste-Testing, Harvest Potluck, and member Seed Swap. In the Let’s Investigate category CHUFF members hope to also tour a nearby allotment garden, potentially take a group field trip to Saltspring for its fabulous Apple Fest, learn more from each other about growing avocados, yams, ginger and mushrooms, learn how to better utilizing the winter greenhouse, and up folks’ success with winter brassicas.

We encourage our QCH Community Association neighbours to watch for CHUFF’s 2 nd annual, open to the public It’s Not Too Late to Plant Garden Tour & Veggie Starts Giveaway, in late May.

 

 

 

‘Til then, as Sarah’s T-shirt advises, we hope you can:
Romaine Calm 🌿Be Sage 🌿 Take Thyme 🌿Squash Fear 🌿 & Stay Peas-ful while growing your own good
food, and/or consuming locally grown foods to support our local farmers.

For more information – contact qchca.chuff@gmail.com

Holiday Craft Fair at Cedar Hill Recreation Centre – November 2025

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The QCHCA Climate Action Committee was pleased to be invited to participate in the Holiday Craft Fair this year!  We thought long and hard about what we could ‘sell’ on our table and promote the Association as well…. The answer was – Climate-Friendly gifting!

We stocked kits to grow microgreens as a climate-friendly gifting idea for kids or adults!  People were able to pick up an envelope of WestCoast microgreen seeds, a small bag of soil and an egg carton ‘planter’ – all free, and everything you need to sprout these
healthy greens all winter inside.

We also demonstrated many ways to wrap gifts without using commercial wrapping (did you know that in Canada we throw out over 400,000 TONS of non-recyclable gift bags/wrap every year?) Using fabric, newspaper, old maps, old music sheets and brown paper we wrapped a variety of ‘gifts’.

Here are the website resources we shared:

Never Buy Gift Paper Again: the Ultimate Guide to Zero Waste Wrapping


https://davidsuzuki.org/living-green/your-guide-green-holidays/

For those who were curious, the holiday prints on the brown paper were made using an xacto knife to carve the design on a potato which was then painted with acrylic and stamped. We thoroughly enjoyed meeting and talking with so many people and hearing of their support for QCHCA and their ideas for a climate-friendly gifting season!

 

Pollinator Garden Update

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QCHCA’s Climate Action Pollinator project update:

It has been a little over one year since we first ‘broke ground’ on the 2 boulevards on Astoria Street at Willerton Avenue. We didn’t actually ‘break ground’ as we used a ‘no dig’ method to smother the existing grass and weeds, layer goodies like alfalfa, straw and bone meal on top and cover the whole area with a generous layer of topsoil.

Before . . .                                                        Preparation of the beds

                                      

We spread seeds, planted some small seedlings, mulched and hoped for the best over the Winter!  With the support of the Saanich Parks department, we carved out some chip paths and installed log benches on both boulevards for the enjoyment of the many people who walk the street leading into the Cedar Hill Park.

Log benches courtesy of Saanich Parks

      

Spring and Summer saw the emergence of more seedlings, grasses, shrubs and, of course – weeds!  Our neighbours generously donated water during the dry summer and volunteers kept the gardens weeded and watered during the drought.

                                  

Now the gardens have been put to bed for the Winter with a fresh layer of leaf mulch as we eagerly await the arrival of Spring to see what has grown and evolved.  The gardens are approximately 60% planted and we plan to add more plants in the Spring – mostly relying on donations from fellow gardeners.

We would love to engage with a few more people to help us establish and maintain the gardens – no prior skill necessary, just a love of our natural environment and a desire to contribute to mitigating the effects of climate change!

Please contact Susan Morrow at qchca3003@gmail.com with questions, ideas, offers….Thank you!

Quadra Cedar Hill Community Association