Oak Bay plans to tackle the challenge of the need for more food gardens, but not just yet.
Council endorsed Coun. Tara Ney’s resolution to develop an Urban Agriculture Task Group to look at creating more community gardens.
“We have a 10-year waiting list in Oak By and that really calls for us to look at other ways we can increase our community garden stock,” Ney said. “Because we are a built out community, we struggle to find public spaces that would be suitable for community gardens.”
The idea is to form a group of community members and experts in urban agriculture to identify areas that are suited to gardening.
“The value is as a social connector. That’s how people see this. This is a healthy social activity that we want to get behind and promote in our community. And we haven’t got an adequate amount of community gardens in our community,” Ney said. “Staff has indicated that we can’t do it right now because it’s not a strategic priority. Because of limited resources, they urge the commission to begin doing this in the next new year.”