accessiblegardens – Farmers on 57th

Solstice Garden Club and Indigenous history

sarah June 22, 2022 June 25, 2022Accessibility, Community, Garden Club

Happy Solstice all! The longest day of the year was marked by grey skies and occasional sprinkling of rain. Today is also National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada with several George Pearson Centre (GPC) residents attending celebrations at the Musqueam reserve, returning aglow. Many nations are represented by the people who live at GPC. We work to reflect on our shared history and towards reconciliation. The land we are on today has long been home to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people. Just down the hill is the site of the former Musqueam winter village c̓əsnaʔəm which existed long before Vancouver was…

Bird’s nest in the raspberries

sarah June 30, 2021 August 13, 2021Garden Club

At the Pearson’s residents Garden Club we have a robust thicket of raspberries which brings us great berry joy. One day whilst picking we heard a ‘pip, pip’ bird sound from the bush. Turns out it was the parent bird trying to draw our attention away from its nest, which was balanced in the bushes, about chest height. Such pretty coloured eggs. It is a white-crowned sparrow nest. We all gathered round, and showed pictures and videos to those who couldn’t see the nest from their wheelchair. Sharing such discoveries make them even more special!

Garden Club grows again

sarah March 31, 2021 February 23, 2022Garden Club

After the unfortunate hiatus in 2020, where Garden Club was fenced off and COVID-19 protocols forced our first break from running the Pearson resident’s gardening program – we resumed in 2021 and the resident gardens are thriving once again. Thankfully the gardens only had a single year of wild growth – not long enough for the blackberries to take over, but certainly long enough for some strange and giant brassicas to have emerged! The below kale plant was planted in 2019 but then skipped going to seed in 2020 for reasons only known to itself. It carried on growing arms…

Pandemic pivoting

sarah July 13, 2020 August 13, 2021Accessibility, Community, Flowers, Garden Club

It has been awhile since we’ve reported from the Garden Club at the George Pearson Centre the long term care facility site, home to 114 residents with disabilities (and abilities, such as green thumbs!) As we all know, 2020 was a very different year, after about mid March. It was tough. We at Farmers on 57th were poised to run another glorious season of therapeutic gardening in partnership with Pearson….when everything stopped. Pearson was locked down to outsiders that weren’t considered essential. At first, family and friends could only visit their loved one through the window. In the end, despite…

Garden Club still grounded

sarah April 19, 2020 February 23, 2022Garden Club

The very popular Garden Club program didn’t start this year (yet), because of the pandemic. We haven’t given up hope that some kind of safe gardening program can serve as Garden Club. Normally we gather together and plants seeds indoors, at the end of March. Every Tuesday after that it is Garden Club from 2-4pm, until the end of September or so. It is a lively gathering of residents, family members, staff, and volunteers. We marvel at colours, smells, sights and tastes. But in 2020, we have a pandemic with a dangerous virus. Many Pearson residents have vulnerable health states…