UBC Farm
Location
6182 South Campus Rd.
UBC Vancouver, BC
Canada
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Certifications & Awards
Project Team
- Initial Founders: Students of the UBC Faculty of Land & Food Systems; Vancity Credit Union's Envirofund; the Fisher Scientific Fund; key University supporters
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Summary
Key Sustainability Features
Teaching
- An 800 m agroforestry trail
- A medicinal plant garden
- The Land, Food, and Community garden, used by elementary schools and featuring a cob arch and shed
- A taxonomy garden used by Botany classes
- A restored vineyard
Research
- An arboretum containing many unusual tree specimens
- An allelopathy research trial
- A free-range poultry run used for integrated pest control research
- 6-10 honeybee hives
- A hedgerow establishment project
- Hybrid poplar archival plantings
- Conifer plantings for pine beetle resistance research
- A plot prepared for Agriculture Canada research on metarhizum (soil fungus) as a natural pesticide
- Wood preservative testing plots, riparian ecosystem research, and habitat and biodiversity sampling areas
Community
- The Mayan society garden
- Musqueam garden
- The Downtown Eastside Aboriginal Community Kitchen Garden Project
As the last working farm within the City of Vancouver, the UBC Farm is an urban agrarian gem that features a landscape of unique beauty. The Farm’s primary steward is the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems (CSFS), an interdisciplinary program of UBC’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems.
The 24-hectare teaching, research, and community farm is located on the University of British Columbia’s Point Grey Campus in Vancouver. It is a student-driven model farm that integrates sustainable land management and food production practices with basic and applied research, innovation, education, and community outreach. There are currently more than 100 academic initiatives that take place on the farm in which 2500 students participate.
The farm, which has been active since 2000, has created an area that not only grows crops but provides an invaluable education and learning centre. Within the farm there are several different growing areas: 1) a market garden where crops are grown for the public markets and the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Box Program; 2) a land, food and community garden used for teaching and education; 3) field research areas for university departments such as botany, forest sciences and faculty of land and food systems; 4) a Maya demonstration garden that highlights traditional Mayan agricultural practices; and 5) a medicinal garden that promises to be one of the farms most beautiful assets. The farm also raises organic chickens and keeps a variety of bees.
Farm volunteers have helped to build a cob arch and shed that demonstrate sustainable construction through using sand, clay, and straw to build structures that can withstand the weather on the
The ultimate goal of the farm is to foster an internationally significant centre for sustainable agriculture, forestry, and food systems. The farm also has a unique opportunity to become integrated with the adjacent new development of the Wesbrook neighbourhood at UBC’s South Campus.
Tours: Open to the public. Summer (May 1 - September 30), Tuesday to Saturday from 9am to 5pm. Spring and Fall (February 16 to April 30 and October 1 to November 30), Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm. Gates will be open during this time, but staff assistance may not be available. Winter (December 1 to February 15) has visits by appointment only.
Farmer's Market Tours: Summer and Fall (June to October), Saturday from 9am to 1pm.
This post was imported and updated from the 'Greater Vancouver Green Guide', it's part of the 'Green Guide Portal' to the Green Building Brain.
