By Doreen Hopkins, Tla’amin community garden coordinator 

Photos by Phil Russell 

Tla’amin Nation has a community garden that’s promoting food security and composting. 

The purpose of the garden is to encourage our community members to start a garden of their own — if an emergency were ever to happen, people would have healthy, local food available at home. 

We planted the seeds of April and the garden consists of five fruit trees and 14 raised beds.  

In the beds, we planted tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, green peppers, potatoes, and garlic, spinach, pumpkin, and watermelon, green and yellow beans. 

And when we opened it up, the compost had turned to beautiful black soil, rich and moist, with big fat worms. We took the compost and mixed it into the soil for fertilizer. 

The plants are just now starting to really flourish! We will certainly enjoy the produce from this garden. 

The garden welcomes the community, recently outlying neighbours, children, young adults and anyone who wants to visit to drop by.