On July 6, 2010, there was a free agri-tour of Cherry Lane Farm, where visitors could see urban farming, organic farming practices, and more diversity in action. Our agr-tours page provided details. Thank you to Miles Smart and everyone else who made it such an informative and enjoyable event.

The Garden City Lands is active at local events like this one at King George Park
and, most recently, the Green Zone at the Steveston Salmon Festival on July 1, 2010.

The Garden City Lands Coalition is a community of people who want the Garden City lands, Richmond, BC, to remain green in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) for agricultural, ecological and open-land park uses for community benefit. The coalition has just rethought a key question, "Why keep the lands green in the ALR?" in this PDF.

If you support that goal, you may wish to receive the Garden City News, a brief newsletter emailed to the Friends of Garden City about twice a month. To subscribe, simply send this subscribe email.

If you support that goal, you may also wish to become a member of the Garden City Lands Coalition Society.

Thanks to Michael Wolfe for guiding a great eco-tour of the Garden City Lands on the morning of International Biodiversity Day. People of all ages from 2 to 75 enjoyed the experience together. Relevantly, since the City or Richmond is conducting the Social Planning Strategy Public Survey, it enabled experiential learning about community social development. As always with our eco-tours and agri-tours, the experience involved environmental respect and gratefulness. Our eco-tours page provides some details of past eco-tours and will announce future ones when they are scheduled.

The Garden City Lands, shown at top, are mapped with details here. The main entrance is shown here.

Our Garden City Lands - brief background

• BC's Agricultural Land Commission was asked to exclude the Garden City Lands, 136 acres of prime farmland in Richmond City Centre from the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) so that over half the property could become high density development.
• Good alternatives had been proposed to keep the Lands as green open space in the ALR. The massive public input, evident in the ALC's Garden City Lands section, overwhelmingly opposed the application.
• The federal Minister of Agriculture indicated in a letter to the Garden City Lands Coalition that his department will consider using the lands for a program need if they become available.
• A key agreement expired on Dec. 31, 2008, after Richmond council refused (by a 6-3 vote) to take drastic means to extend it.
• On Feb. 12, 2009, the Garden City Lands panel of B.C.'s Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) REJECTED the application to remove the Lands from the ALR. Here's what we told the commission in a thorough analysis, and here's the commission's decision.
• Under the basic Garden City Lands memorandum of agreement (MOU), which has no expiry date, the City of Richmond renegotiated with Canada Lands Company and the Musqueam Indian Band to determine the future of the Lands. There could also have been occasion for the federal government to become involved.
• Along with unified strategic action by Richmond council, community action on this issue remains very important. Visit the Action page.

•  Many defenders of the Garden City Lands wrote to Canada Lands Company, and the Garden City Lands Coalition has couriered a large (about two hundred pages), organized (in a binder with seventeen tabbed dividers), and highly informed presentation. It is also available here on this website. It is called Save Garden City: An urgent request to Canada Lands Company.

• The City of Richmond purchased the Garden City Land on March 31, 2010. The Musqueam Indian Band sued the City of Richmond, making various claims on the premise that it sold its interest to the city under duress, in a writ dated April 9, 2010.

Our free eco-tours and agri-tours are always popular. They included the 2009 Biodiversity Tours of the Fraser River Delta. For information about tours, see our eco-tours page.

Visit the Richmond's Garden City Lands blog for more in-depth insights.

To read a PDF file, you may need to download Adobe Acrobat. To do so, click on the icon at left.