GET INVOLVED

Book a Child & Youth Workshop

Looking to bring hands-on environmental education into your classroom? Look no further than our workshops for children and youth!

Book a child and youth workshop in your classroom, or come visit our teaching gardens! We offer a variety of programming for learners from preschool to grade 12. Inquire about the possibility of French composting workshops for immersion classes from kindergarten to grade 8!

Accessibility Information

Our educators aim to make our workshops accessible and enjoyable for students with diverse needs. Get in touch if you have students who may benefit from accommodations so that we can best prepare for your workshop. For information about accessibility on our site during visits, see here.

Testimonials

“It was very apparent that the kids and their parents thoroughly enjoyed the program. The day after the program I had one little guy, who attended the program, ask me to find him books on composting as his family were going to build a compost!”

“I liked how experiential the tour was for the children. The facilitator was skilled at maintaining the children’s attention and keeping them interested.”

“Elora was very interactive, engaging, and fun! She noticed when the children needed to move and was willing to respond to many questions, comments, and student inquiries!”

Spring Plant Sale – May 9th, 2026

Save the Date! The Spring plant sale will be held on May 9th, 2026 from 10am-2pm. The plant sale will take place in Haegert Park (1202 Yukon St.) one block from our site on North Park street. Bring a blanket or a picnic so you can enjoy the music in the shade of the giant…
Save the Date! The Spring plant sale will be held on May 9th, 2026 from 10am-2pm. The plant sale will take place in Haegert Park (1202 Yukon St.) one block from our site on North Park street. Bring a blanket or a picnic so you can enjoy the music in the shade of the giant Sequoia tree. Entry by donation. No one turned away from lack of funds. Dogs welcome.

The Spring Organic Plant Sale features local farmers offering a wide variety of organically grown vegetable, flower and herb seedlings to get you off to a successful start this growing season.

What you can look forward to:

• The largest selection of organically grown heirloom tomato varieties all in one place for easy shopping

• Organically grown vegetable starts from arugula to zucchini

• Native plants for your low maintenance garden

• Perennial edibles like berry bushes and other fruiting shrubs

• Medicinal herbs like English lavender, chamomile and yarrow

• Culinary herbs like Genovese basil, dill and chives

• Companion plants like marigolds, sweet cicely and comfrey

Accessibility Information

The sale will be happening in Haegert park which is grassy and slightly sloped, there are curb cuts at various entrance points to get into the park.

Visitors can park at the Vic High parking lot between Gladstone Avenue and Grant St. The parking lot is a 200m walk from Haegert Park.

Thank you to our sponsors:
- Hatchet & Seed
- LADR Landscape Architects
- Biophilia Collective
- Country Grocer
- Cold Comfort
- Habit Coffee
- Patagonia Victoria
- The Private Network
- Zero Waste Emporium
- Chek News
- West Coast Seeds
The Compost Education Centre is located on unceded and occupied Indigenous territories, specifically the land of the Lekwungen speaking people—the Xwsepsum 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.
Vermicomposting (Grades 9-12)

1 hour | $75/workshop+$40 worm bin | Book anytime

Worm bins are an ecosystem and composting system all in one! Dive deep into the world of composting and worm anatomy with the option to keep a worm bin for your classroom.

Book Now
Composting Basics (Grades 9-12)

1-1.5 hours | $90/workshop | Book anytime for in-person or online

Learn the basics of successful composting, the various techniques used to compost, and the importance of soil to our society and the earth.

Book Now
Sustainability Site Tour (Grades 9-12)

1 hour | $75/workshop | Best booked April-September

Dive deep into the world of composting, native plants and pollinators, veggie gardens, aquaponics, and more with a guided tour of our Teaching Gardens and Demonstration Site. The tour offers a look into real-life applications of sustainability practices and encourages discussion, critical thinking and reflection.

Book Now
Changes are afoot at the CEC Demonstration Site

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,…

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
Join our Board!

We are looking for individuals with a variety of perspectives, skills, and experience to join our Board of Directors. Share your passion for composting, ecological conservation, and food justice! The Compost Education Centre’s vision is to cultivate resilient communities, which enable the land and all living beings to thrive. Our mission is to reconnect people,…
We are looking for individuals with a variety of perspectives, skills, and experience to join our Board of Directors.

Share your passion for composting, ecological conservation, and food justice!

The Compost Education Centre’s vision is to cultivate resilient communities, which enable the land and all living beings to thrive. Our mission is to reconnect people, young and old, to land-based resilience-building practices related to composting, ecological gardening, and conservation. Our organizational practices sustain the organization, the natural environment, and our communities. We actively work towards right relations, anti-oppression, and environmental justice in solidarity with the Indigenous peoples on whose land we work. Our core values are reciprocity, adaptability, curiosity, joy, and groundedness.

Benefits of Participating
- Fantastic opportunity to build experience in organizational growth, not-for-profit, and charity work
- Connect and collaborate with a dedicated team that is passionate about waste reduction, soil conservation, local food production, and the intersections between food, land, and environmental justice
- Training and leadership development opportunities on topics including soil conservation and composting, team building, social enterprise development, event coordination, sustainable living skills, and DEI
- Contribute to the wellbeing of your community, local ecosystems, and the broader environment
Helpful Skills and Experience
- A love for composting, food and environmental justice, urban agriculture, waste diversion, and soil health!
- Familiarity with non-profits including prior experience on or working with a Board of Directors
- Leadership experience
- Fundraising experience and familiarity with revenue generation in non-profit structures
Board of Directors FAQs

What is a Board of Directors? The Board is responsible for setting mission and strategic direction, providing high-level oversight, and serving as ambassadors of the organization. The CEC’s Board is a dynamic team focused on supporting the organization’s mission.

What would I do as a Board member? You attend board meetings every month and may join a committee to work on additional projects (e.g. Fundraising, DEI initiatives, etc.). You commit to a two-year term consisting of an average of 5-10 hours of work per month.

Can anyone become a Board Member? Yes! To join the Board, you have to become a member before October 6, communicate your interest by filling out the form below, and attend our AGM on Thursday, November 7, 2024 to get nominated. If the cost of membership is a barrier to you becoming a Board Member and/or there are other barriers you have identified, please reach out to Claire at info@compost.bc.ca to discuss accommodations.

What are the perks of joining the Board? Volunteering with a charitable non-profit organization provides practical work skills. It’s also a way to meet very cool and like-minded folks from other professions and disciplines. You also get awesome snacks at every board meeting, and we do staff and board dinners once or twice a year.

Are Board Members paid? Unfortunately, no. The BC Societies Act prohibits us from paying Board Members. These positions are volunteer.

Fill out the form below to apply.
Fall Plant Sale Fast Approaching!

The Compost Education Centre (CEC) is hosting our annual all-organic Fall plant sale! August 10, 10am-12pm! The plant sale will take place in our site at 1216 North Park street. Stay for a while and enjoy bike pedal-powered music in the garden. Entry by donation or free for CEC members. Dogs welcome. The Fall Organic…
The Compost Education Centre (CEC) is hosting our annual all-organic Fall plant sale! August 10, 10am-12pm!

The plant sale will take place in our site at 1216 North Park street. Stay for a while and enjoy bike pedal-powered music in the garden. Entry by donation or free for CEC members. Dogs welcome.

The Fall Organic Plant sale features veggie starts that are perfect for your overwintering vegetable garden.

What you can look forward to:

• A selection of annual vegetables suitable for fall and winter growing

• Native plants for your low maintenance garden

• Perennial edibles like berry bushes and other fruiting shrubs

• Medicinal herbs like English lavender, chamomile and yarrow

• Live bicycle powered music!

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.

Accessibility Information

The Compost Education Centre is committed to creating a welcoming and inclusive experience for all our community members.

Getting to the Compost Education Centre

The Compost Education Centre is located at 1216 North Park St. The closest bus stops are:
- Pandora Ave at Chambers St (Stop ID: 100169) (300 meters away) served by Routes 2, 5, 27, and 28;
- Cook St at Balmoral Rd (Stop ID: 100160) (350 meters away) served by Routes 24 and 25;
- Fernwood Rd at Grant St (Stop ID: 100227) (450 meters away) served by Route 22; and
- Bay St at Cedar Hill (Stop ID: 103733) (750 meters away) served by Route 10.
A bus transit planner is available on the BC Transit website (https://www.bctransit.com/victoria/).

The Compost Education Centre is accessible by bicycle, and there is ample bike parking available. Bike routes are visible on the CRD website (https://maps.crd.bc.ca/Html5Viewer/?viewer=BikeMap).

Parking

Parking is very limited. The closest parking options during the week are:
- Two 2-hour parking spots at the corner of North Park St and Chambers St (50 meters away);
- Three 2-hour parking spots at Haegert Park (100 meters away);
- One 1-hour parking spot at the corner of North Park St and Cook St (250 meters away);
- Multiple 1-hour parking spots on Gladstone Ave opposite the Fernwood Community Centre (300 meters away); and
- One 1-hour parking spot at the corner of Caledonia Ave and Cook St (350 meters away).
All other parking within 400 meters of the Compost Education Centre is residential-only. While construction is occurring adjacent to the Compost Education Centre at 1211 Gladstone Ave (projected to be complete in June 2025), parking is even more limited.

On Saturdays, parking is available in the Victoria High School parking lots that are accessible off Grant St and Gladstone Ave. From these parking lots, it is less than a 300 meter walk to the Compost Education Centre.

Site Accessibility

The Compost Education Centre site has paths made of wood chips. Mobility devices with wheels (such as wheelchairs, walkers etc.) are sometimes difficult to use on site. The Strawbale learning classroom is accessed via a wooden ramp, and it has a wide double door and a ramp leading up to it. Once inside the Strawbale, the floor is a level hard surface. There is a single-stall gender-neutral washroom on site. The washroom is not wheelchair accessible. There is a wooden ramp up to the washroom door and a small step over the doorframe into the washroom. The retail space is not wheelchair accessible; there are four steps up into our retail space.
Meet Emily!

Hi everyone! My name is Emily, I’m the new Child and Youth Education Assistant at the CEC, and I’m very excited to be working here for the summer! While originally from the territories of the Anishinaabe Mississauga peoples out East, I have been living on these lands for the past 7 years. As a graduate…

Hi everyone!

My name is Emily, I’m the new Child and Youth Education Assistant at the CEC, and I’m very excited to be working here for the summer! While originally from the territories of the Anishinaabe Mississauga peoples out East, I have been living on these lands for the past 7 years. As a graduate from the Geography and Indigenous Studies departments at UVic, my experience and interests lie primarily in community-based research, environmental education, and climate justice.

My interest in working with the CEC came from a passion for projects that help support healthy and reciprocal relationships to the land, as well as instilling these values in the hearts and minds of our society’s youngest members.

In my free time you’ll find me gardening, climbing, practicing my Spanish, and trying to entertain my very needy cat. Besides helping with the Child and Youth Education Program, I’ll be spending my time with Zoe-Blue working on some fun communications materials. Come find me in the office and garden; I love a good chat, especially when it’s about Native plants!
Garden Plot Plan

Because I won’t have the plot until the end of the March at the earliest, it’s my plan to focus on summer crops to start. I’m trying to choose vegetables based on what I like to eat (duh), how easy they are to grow, and what people have suggested. So far I have: tomatoes, basil,…

Because I won’t have the plot until the end of the March at the earliest, it’s my plan to focus on summer crops to start. I’m trying to choose vegetables based on what I like to eat (duh), how easy they are to grow, and what people have suggested. So far I have: tomatoes, basil, and sweet peas. Ooh and I definitely want to grow some happy flowers for some happy pollinators.

The garden plots at Oswald Park are not big, which I think will be great for a novice gardener like me. I don’t really know what I’m doing and I tend to fill my summers with activities. The thought of having a relatively small space in which to mess up in sounds just about right. I took a look at the “square foot garden plan guide,” which shows how many plantings to do per square foot. This is what the current plot map looks like:

Most of the plants above can be direct sown, but the tomatoes need to be started early. I had a few seeds left over from a failed balcony container gardening experiment a few summers ago, and I bought a seed packet from the CEC, too.

I’m planning on traveling for a two week span over the summer so I’m also thinking ahead to watering needs. At the Victoria Seedy Sunday, I met the folks from Mayne Island Clay Works. They make these beautiful “ollas,” which are designed to buried in the ground and filled with water that is then slowly released to surrounding plants. We have one in the CEC retail space right now, and I’m kinda obsessed. I sent them an email, and they’ll bring one down to Victoria the next time they’re here doing deliveries. I’ve got this wild idea that I can dilute the Bokashi liquid in the olla for my fertilizer and irrigation needs. Stay tuned.

Next Steps

And we’re rolling, people! I’ll be keeping an eye on my tomato starts, drinking coffee for the Bokashi bran, making the Bokashi bran, and planning my planting dates for my other vegetables. Check back in a few weeks to hear how I’m doing!
Spring Plant Sale happening soon!

The Compost Education Centre (CEC) is hosting our annual all-organic May plant sale! May 11th, 2024 10AM-2PM The plant sale will take place in Haegert Park (1202 Yukon St.) one block from our site on North Park street. Bring a blanket or a picnic so you can enjoy the music in the shade of the…

The Compost Education Centre (CEC) is hosting our annual all-organic May plant sale! May 11th, 2024 10AM-2PM

The plant sale will take place in Haegert Park (1202 Yukon St.) one block from our site on North Park street. Bring a blanket or a picnic so you can enjoy the music in the shade of the giant Sequoia tree. Entry by donation or free for CEC members. Dogs welcome.

The Spring Organic Plant Sale features local farmers offering a wide variety of organically grown vegetable, flower and herb seedlings to get you off to a successful start this growing season.

There will also be a Parent-Child workshop taking place during the sale, from 11:00am-12:00pm so bring the whole family!

What you can look forward to:

• The largest selection of organically grown heirloom tomato varieties all in one place for easy shopping

• Organically grown vegetable starts from arugula to zucchini

• Native plants for your low maintenance garden

• Perennial edibles like berry bushes and other fruiting shrubs

• Medicinal herbs like English lavender, chamomile and yarrow

• Culinary herbs like Genovese basil, dill and chives

• Companion plants like marigolds, sweet cicely and comfrey

• Live bicycle powered music!

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.

Accessibility Information

The sale will be happening in Haegert park which is grassy and slightly sloped, there are curb cuts at various entrance points to get into the park.

Visitors can park at the Vic High parking lot between Gladstone Avenue and Grant St. The parking lot is a 200m walk from Haegert Park.