If you’ve walked past the Compost Education Centre demonstration site at 1216 North Park Street in the past couple months, you’ve likely noticed tree removal on the north side, temporary fencing at different places and road work on North Park!
For the past 4 years since the Caledonia Housing Development was in its consultation phase, the CEC has known that our site footprint would be impacted.
That all came to reality starting October 1 here at the CEC demonstration site. Because of needs for specific access points into the housing development, Vining is in the process of being widened (between Chambers St and the development), and in exchange for the lost demonstration site space and allotment garden space, the demonstration stie is expanding into North Park St between Chambers St and the development.
The wonderful folks at Hatchet and Seed have been sub-contracted by the construction company to build out new demonstration areas on North Park, rebuild the greenhouse and coldframe, and reconfigure some impacted allotment garden beds. We’ll be replanting some fruit trees on the south side of the site to try to make up for the loss of the two mature apple trees we had along the back fence. The CEC recognizes the impact of removing large trees like the apples and eucalyptus, and so we held a special tree ceremony for those trees in advance of them being removed. Small trees are not a replacement for mature trees in terms of the ecosystem services they provide, so we were very sad to see these mature trees go.
On the positive side, much of the eucalyptus was chipped and we’ve spread those chips around the site, and they will continue their life as they decompose and build soil. Additionally, larger, straight logs from the eucalyptus were milled up beautifully, and we are now selling them as a fundraiser for the CEC! Please consider purchasing a memento from the eucalyptus tree for your next project. Details and inventory of the wood can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/share/15W9fDvQAi/ or here: https://www.usedvictoria.com/miscellaneous-for-sale/40983950
Zoe-Blue Coates (she/her), Birder and Resilient Communities Enthusiast
February 22, 2024
If you’ve been by the Compost Education Centre, you’ve probably been warmly welcomed – and educated – by Zoe-Blue Coates. Zoe-Blue is our officer manager, communications coordinator, and general doer. If you have a question about anything regarding the Compost Education Centre, she’s probably the person to ask! And if you catch her at a quiet moment, she’ll relay to you her latest efforts at a more sustainable and resilient life whether it’s solar dehydrating mushrooms (grown at the Compost Education Centre demonstration site!) or showing up for her community in an intentional and grounded way.
When she’s not dispensing composting wisdom at work, she frequently leads nature walks for the Special Bird Service Society, a group focused on making nature more accessible for the global majority through birding. Across her work and play, Zoe-Blue aims to inspire other to form reciprocal relationships with the land through caring for the natural world that is closest to them regardless of whether it is in a rural or urban environment.
The Narwhal recently featured Zoe-Blue in its article, “Many birds are named for enslavers, colonizers and white supremacists. That’s about to change.” The article shares how Zoe-Blue has always been a birder, but through a “Bird Language Interpretation” workshop offered through the Compost Ed Centre, she started paying attention to bird sounds and found it to be an accessible and grounding exercise. (If you’re interested in taking this same course, we are offering it on March 9, 2024 at 10 am!) Zoe-Blue shares her take on renaming birds, which is that by changing names we can clarify the connection between birds and people, plants, and other beings. And by clarifying the connection? We could be lucky enough to have a deeper relationship with the birds and a richer commitment to conservation.
Interested in learning more? Zoe-Blue is teaching a workshop at the Compost Education Centre’s Strawbale classroom on April 27, 2024 at 1 PM about “How Birds Help: Gardening with Reciprocity.” In the workshop, she’ll cover what birds are commonly found in Southern Vancouver Island backyards; how birds help us control pests, rodents, and pollinate our plants; and how we can form a reciprocal relationship with our winged neighbors. We look forward to connecting with you!
I was relieved to dig a little deeper into the publication to find that the study did find that urban agriculture has a smaller carbon footprint than conventional agriculture when the following practices are followed:
– Longer-term use of infrastructure and tenancy of a space
The Compost Education Centre helps to steward several urban gardens including at our demonstration site, a boulevard garden network in the Fairfield-Gonzales neighborhood, the Alexander Park Orchard, and SJ Burnside Secondary School’s teaching garden. Our demonstration site features eight different composting systems, rainwater cisterns and barrels, and a solar-powered aquaponics system. Come by anytime for a visit!
We have found that urban gardens serve as powerful outdoor classrooms that inspire local climate mitigation and adaptation activities. For example, our urban gardens empower community members to:
– Produce food locally with the objective of improving food security and mitigate emissions associated with our food system.
– Cultivate native plant and pollinator gardens to support pollinators, which are under threat from climate change.
– Implement rainwater harvesting to reduce climate change vulnerability.
The Compost Education Centre will be hosting the first Red Wriggler Revue on September 28th from 6:30-9. Come by for a screening of the 1998 Pixar classic, A Bug’s Life! Admission is by donation and there will be popcorn for sale. We invite you to bring other snacks and wear something cozy.
Accessibility: The pathways of the garden are comprised of woodchips. There is also about a 1″ step between the bathroom platform and the bathroom. There is wheelchair-accessible parking located directly outside of the Centre along North Park Street. There are three hoses with potable water located on site. There is a ramp into the strawbale building, chairs will be provided.
The fall is a time for fresh starts. As students head back to school and our child and youth programming kicks off, we’re laying the foundation for our three-year strategic plan. So much has happened in the past three years that we’re taking a moment to reflect on the challenges and successes, gather insights from our community, and come together and connect.
The CEC’s staff, board, and volunteers met the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic with innovation, commitment, and care. External demand for the educational services offered by the CEC increased significantly in the first two years of the pandemic. COVID-19 greatly impacted supply chains and availability of food, and, in parallel, lockdowns and social distancing protocols offered a moment for community members to begin gardening and composting. The CEC was able to provide educational resources that were extremely popular and led to more people growing food and making compost. We observed a significant increase in our membership, retail sales, web hits, and phone calls.
The increase in demand for CEC’s services stretched the organization’s internal resources and capacity. The CEC’s five-person staff rapidly responded to the pandemic by teaching workshops over Zoom, creating take-home educational kits, and modifying the demonstration site’s visiting hours.
As a whole, the organization continues to adapt and grow, and in February 2023, the CEC hired me (hello!) as the new Executive Director.
Last week, we went out to Shirley, BC for our staff retreat. It was wonderful to take time for nature, snacking, and intentional conversations. We spent some time on Muir Creek Beach and French Beach: Elora wandered off looking at all the mosses and flowers; Zoe-Blue identified loons and sea lions through her binoculars; Kayla facilitated some funny team-building games; and Jeffrey and Claire almost lost a Frisbee to the ocean waves. We talked about our strengths and areas of growth, both as individuals and as an organization. We discussed how power works in our organization and how we hold ourselves accountable for how the organization wields its powers. Overall, we came away with a greater feeling of connection to each other and more clarity on how we might be more impactful as an organization moving forward.
We’re going to be taking those thoughts with us into the strategic planning days that we’re having with our board at the end of September. To help contextualize our conversations, we have been surveying our community via an online questionnaire.
Interested in helping shape our 3-year strategic plan?
Fill out this form here – and enter in your email to win a prize!
We’ve already received such wonderful feedback from you all. In response to the question, “How will we know we are succeeding?” one respondent shared,
We have a team of staff who feel supported, thriving programs and services, connections with many partners in the community, and we are working in alignment with our organizational values and principles.
We’re so grateful for you all – and we do feel supported! We know that the next three years will be full of challenges, and we are confident in our ability as an organization to strengthen our community’s resilience and ability to adapt to those challenges.
Excited to hear about what happens behind the scenes?
We are so grateful to have received funding through the Government of Canada’s Community Services Recovery Fund (CSRF). The Community Services Recovery Fund is a one-time $400 million investment from the Government of Canada to support community service organizations, including charities, non-profits and Indigenous governing bodies, as they adapt and modernize their organizations. We have been able to engage in the staff retreat and other strategic planning activities with the support of the CSRF.
“I am continually impressed by the passion, dedication, and creativity of community service organizations, like the Compost and Education Centre. I am equally proud the Government of Canada has supported their important work through the Community Services Recovery Fund. By investing in these organizations and their projects we can help to create a more just and equitable society, where everyone has opportunities to succeed. I look forward to seeing the positive impact of this investment in (community name) over the years to come.”
– Jenna Sudds, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development
Summer is here and we are so happy to welcome our newest staff member! Celia has been a longtime volunteer in the garden and the Healing City Soils program. We are fortunate to have her on our team this summer. Below are some get to know me questions.
What’s your favorite dish?Tabbouleh! So fresh and delicious.
What’s your favorite summer activity?Riding my bike to the lake.
What do you like about the Compost Education Centre?I like feeling connected to food, the land, and growing out food responsibly with reciprocity for the beings around us. I love sharing that education with everyone in our community who wants to learn. It’s been great working with the CEC and feeling connected to food and flowers!
What’s your favorite berry? I love strawberries, but when it comes to flavor, raspberries have my heart.
What do you do in your free time?I like to garden, sew, and read. Currently, I’m rereading the Lord of the Rings.
Our resident worm herder and child and youth education coordinator, Jeffrey was featured in a Saanich News article on work composting. In the article and accompanying video, Jeffrey demonstrates how worm composting can help us keep food waste out of the landfill and composting facilities, while creating a nutrient dense growing medium for gardeners. Click here to read the article ??
Claire Remington has joined the Compost Education team as the Executive Director.
She is a settler with German, British, and Irish ancestry who has lived on Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ territories for the past five years. She was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and grew up in Nairobi, Kenya where her parents worked for an international humanitarian agency. She holds a BA in Chemistry from Reed College in Portland, Oregon and a MASc in Civil Engineering from the University of Victoria.
Claire is an interdisciplinary researcher with a decade of work experience focused on improving communities’ sustainability and resilience. Before working for the CEC, Claire spent 8 years working for SOIL, a non-governmental organization that operates a household sanitation and thermophilic composting waste treatment service in Haiti. Her strengths include project management, financial analysis, stakeholder consultation, and technical communication. She has also taught university-level courses with a focus on sustainable natural resource management, public health engineering, and sustainable cities.
In her free time you’ll find Claire playing ultimate frisbee, reading a book, hiking, or playing board games with friends.
We are grateful to be this years recipients of the Good Food Champion Award in the Food Literacy Category. This recognition of our work is motivation for us to continue our mission and work closely with our communities as we build resiliency in the face of food insecurity, top soil depletion, and the other issues seen by climate change. We do not do this work in isolation! Congratulations to the other award winners: Iye Creative, Welcome Gardens, Community Fridge, Wild Mountain Restaurant, and Sandown Centre for Regenerative Agriculture. May we all continue to cultivate resilient communities for years to come.
The Compost Education Centre (CEC) is a charitable, not for profit organization that provides composting, organic gardening and conservation education to residents of the Capital Regional District (CRD).
The CEC is seeking an Executive Director. The ideal candidate will have leadership experience in the non-profit sector, strong communication skills and a great capacity for innovative and strategic thinking.
Work Week: 32 hours per week to start, work week Tuesday – Friday, 9:00am – 5:30pm. After 3-month training and probationary period, potential to expand the role to 40 hours per week, Monday-Friday 9:00am – 5:30pm. Occasional weekend and evening work.
