Every day is “soil day” at the Riley Park Community Garden.

Read our post from our local soil scientist, Professor Emeritus UBC, Dr. Art Bomke

December 5 is World Soil Day, a day on which we are encouraged to become more aware of soils and their importance in the sustainability of the earth’s ecosystems. The Riley Park Community Garden group, under the auspices of the Little Mountain Neighbourhood House is actively collaborating with UBC students in a case study of park soil creation and management of both natural and human-made soils. The soils of Riley Park offer an opportunity to connect with the natural history of the community and with the way in which urban soils currently influence the way we live in this community.

Beginning in 2016, students from UBC Applied Biology 402/SOIL 502 (Sustainable Soil Management) have sampled the park to establish a data base focused on the fertility of park soils. This is likely the best data set of this kind in Canada and aims to characterize soil quality indicators of importance to growing plants in the park.

Riley Park lies on the boundary of two very important soil parent materials in Vancouver, well drained glacial till and poorly drained glacial marine deposits. To further complicate the picture, redevelopment in the northern quadrant of the park in 2015-16 created a landscape of human-made, anthropic soils that are to support the community garden and green space for grass and other vegetation. In order to improve our knowledge of park soils and how they function in Riley Park we are, for the second year, collaborating with a group of Environment 400 students whose main goal is to map the soils of Riley Park and suggest design and management implications of the various soils. 

The results of these collaborations will be to assist and enrich the outreach programs of the Riley Park Community Garden. Examples include the current Ecological Literacy Through Gardening initiative with Brock Elementary School and our desire to support local gardeners and other community gardens.  Every day is a “soil day” at Riley Park.