Grow the Best Garden is Back!
January 23, 2026
Join us for a series that explores a wide variety of incredibly important gardening topics, from planning and planting, to harvest and seed saving!
Whether you’re a novice or an experienced gardener, this series will be certain to offer you tips and tricks, strategies and tools for growing your best garden ever.
The in-person series features five 3 hour long workshops, once per month for five months. We’ll have at least 2 hours of instruction, a hands on activity in the gardens, and time for questions and answers.
The online series features five pre-recorded approximately 2 hour long online talks, once per month for five months. This flexible asynchronous learning allows you to access the workshops when you want and your expert instructor is available in between sessions by phone and email for questions. You will be emailed a link to view the talks once each month, and will be able to view them in any web browser. There will be a live 1 hour Q & A session at the end of the series hosted on Microsoft Teams, the link will be emailed to you in May.
Interested in attending some of the in the series workshops but not all of them? Sign up for one off workshops here.
Series Outline
#1: Plan and Prepare Your Garden – January
It’s the time of year when gardeners get excited about plotting and planning what they will be planting in their garden. Here on Southern Vancouver Island, good planning makes it possible to harvest produce from our gardens during every month of the year. \
#2: Seeding Techniques and Garden Care – February
There are so many ways to grow plants, and in this workshop, we’ll learn about the most common seeding techniques, and then get into garden care during the different seasons of the year.
#3: Build Incredible Soil – March
In this workshop we’ll explore the basis of all life on earth: Healthy Soil! We’ll explore what soil is made of and the vast importance of soil microbes.
#4: Extending Your Harvest & Saving Seeds – April
In this workshop we’ll explore timelines for seeding to ensure an extended harvest – be the one at a potluck in January with a backyard salad on offer! We’ll explore ways and ways to extend your harvest longer into the fall and winter. Then we’ll launch into the importance and practice of seed saving.
#5: Harvest & Preserve Your Bounty – May
The most fun part of gardening is the delicious harvest and squirreling some away for winter enjoyment! In this workshop we’ll talk optimal harvest windows for different crops and cover the basics of food preservation. Preserving food is not only a delicious way to taste summer in the dark rainy days of winter, but it is also an act of sustainability and creates more security in the food system. We’ll allow some time for final questions and answers before we wrap up the final workshop in the series!