Staff at the Salvation Army's Lighthouse food bank have downsized the nationally recognized community "food forest" outside the facility to make it more manageable and to accommodate future renovation.
On Friday morning, April 4, a work bee consisting of Salvation Arm/Salmon Arm Ministries staff and Shuswap Food Action Society volunteers were digging into and disassembling the north half of the Lighthouse Community Food Forest, while preparing the southern half for another season of growth.
Dressed in coveralls and carrying a shovel, Salmon Arm Salvation Army community ministries co-ordinator Sam Thiessen paused her work to explain plans for a consolidated garden area by the 3rd Street and 5th Avenue SW intersection.
鈥淎 lot of the food was just things that aren鈥檛 necessarily recognizable to people who don鈥檛 garden regularly, like it was fancy types of kale and things that people didn鈥檛 know when to harvest or pick鈥�," said Thiessen, explaining one of the goals is to focus on more common produce that people not only recognize, but know when it can be picked and eaten. "We need to cater to the people who use our building, not the idea of what we hope will work. So eople that come here, lots of them don't have their own gardens and it鈥檚 not a passion for them to grow their own things, and also they can come here and get fruit and produce so they don鈥檛 necessarily need to do the work to have it."
The Food Forest was built in 2021 by the Shuswap Food Action Society with guidance from Keli Westgate of Lekker Land Design. The idea behind the project was to have a garden that mimics a forest, designed to be more self-sufficient than raised bed gardens. In 2023, the space was recognized by the Society for Organic Urban Landcare as one of its Greener Greenspaces of 2022. This is a national program that recognizes urban green spaces across Canada.
Grateful for the ongoing help and support with the garden, particularly from the Shuswap Food Action Society's Melanie Bennet, this is the season Thiessen and the Salvation Arm are taking full ownership of the project.
Thiessen said another reason for the garden's consolidation is to open up the its northern for future renovation.
"We have renovations coming in the future," said Thiessen. "That was one of the reasons this is going to be coming out here. Let鈥檚 get ahead of that 鈥� so at the time of the renovations we鈥檙e not losing all this."
