Douglas College
IN-7: Community Garden

The Sustainability Outreach and Learning (Sol) garden was established at the Coquitlam campus in 2015. Since then, the Sol Garden has hosted numerous educational workshops for students and community members on urban sustainability. In 2021, Douglas College plans to expand the Sol Garden and associated programs to increase indigenous interpretive content and plantings.

The College has established demonstration plantings at the Sol Garden where educational workshops are provided. Target groups for workshops include youth, homeowners, indigenous stakeholders, environmental organizations, municipal staff and members of the landscape and nursery trades. Our objective is to increase the uptake of native plants in urban gardens on a regional scale through promotion of their benefits. Increased planting of species that provide ecosystem services like pollination and pest control has the potential to increase crop yields of food plant and reduce the need to use synthetic pesticides to manage pests. We anticipate a secondary benefit of public education regarding plant use by local indigenous groups.