SHEILA WEAVER GREW UP helping in her father’s garden. From young adulthood, for over three decades she visited family friends on South Pender Island who were avid organic gardeners, producing much of their own food. After a while she was able to start a vegetable garden of her own in friends’ front yard in Vancouver, that she enjoyed until moving to Gambier Island sixteen years later.

            On South Pender Sheila learned things she has not seen or heard mentioned elsewhere, to do with aphids and other critters, mulch and mulching, and more, that made her island friends’ garden a shining example of the motto, “Look after the soil and the plants will look after themselves.” Her Vancouver garden added more discoveries.

            Currently Sheila has only a small, unfenced patch for ornamentals. But since 2013 she has kept her hands in the dirt looking after the Museum garden in Gibsons, later adding Gibsons Heritage Playhouse, in both cases with a partner.