Community Flower and Garden Show

Are you looking for new ways to declare independence from escalating food costs and gloomy news? Celebrate Canada by growing wonderful fruits and veggies in your own back yard. Plant a pot or a row of strawberries, tomatoes, peppers or herbs. Fill your life with the beauty of flowers, trees and shrubs.

Whether your garden is a front porch or an acre, your gardening will get a boost at the Mill Bay Flower & Garden Show Saturday May 31 from 9 am to 2 pm. Celebrate spring, gardening and Canada’s abundance by joining us for a day filled with flowers and positive vibes. You’ll find great food, beautiful flowers, plants to purchase, garden vendors, and a huge silent auction of dazzling garden-related items.

Hundreds of entries in flower, plant and edible classes collected from gardens all over the Cowichan Valley will create a dazzling and often fragrant display. Visitors can vote for their favourite flower arrangements for the People’s Choice Award.

The Mill Bay plant sale features hundreds of plants – from vegetable starts and berries to annuals, perennials and shrubs. Special for this year, due to the cancellation of the annual Plantaholics sale, expect an extra dose of unique and beautiful offerings from the Plantaholics expert growers. Come early for the best choice!

The garden show offers more than 50 flower, fruit, and vegetable categories and all are welcome to exhibit their garden favourites. Classes range from spring flowers like Foxglove, Delphinium and Heuchera, to hostas and flowering shrubs and roses.  

Download the exhibitors’ brochure at the link below to find out how, or pick one up locally at Buckerfield’s, The Crazy Daisy Garden Shoppe (at the Laughing Llama), Country Grocer (Valley View) Dinter’s Nursery or Shar-Kare. 

Entries must be submitted between 1:00 PM and 6:50 PM on May 30. Entry fee is just $0.50 per entry with no limit on the number of entries you’d like to show in.

The Flower Show Silent Auction offers over a hundred items donated by artisans, sponsors, businesses, and club members. Last year’s donations ranged from a truckload of primo bark mulch to an artist‐created birdbath.

This Silent Auction directly benefits local charities. (Last year, it supported Nourish Cowichan, the CMS Food Bank, Cowichan Estuary Restoration and Conservation Association, the Shawnigan Basin Society, Cowichan Hospice and Somenos Transition House.) The Mill Bay Garden Club also supports a bursary to provide financial assistance to qualifying local students entering higher education in agricultural and horticultural studies.

Finally, you can support a good (and delicious) cause at the South Cowichan Healthcare Auxiliary Strawberry Tea. Bring your appetite!