Closing out a stellar year
Sigrie Kendrick – Dec 31, 2025 / 11:00 am | Story: 591737
Photo: Contributed
Visitors enjoy the Xeriscape Demonstration Garden from the comfort of a new bench, installed with the help of the City of Kelowna’s parks department in 2025.
As we close out 2025 and look toward the new year, members are feeling energized by this past year’s accomplishments and the growing interest in sustainable landscaping practices.
From the Communities in Bloom judges’ recognition with an award for our Xeriscape Demonstration Garden, to our new visitors’ bench and our new composter, the milestones in 2025 represent different facets of our work, validation, visitor experience, and educational outreach.
Together, they demonstrate that beautiful, thriving gardens and environmental responsibility go hand in hand.
Thank-you to our dedicated volunteers, supportive community members, and everyone who visited, learned from and contributed to our garden this year.
We are celebrating OXA’s 2025 achievements. From prestigious recognition to practical improvements that enhance visitors’ experience in our primary garden, 2025 has been a year of meaningful progress in our mission to promote water-wise gardening and environmental stewardship in our community.
Our proudest moment this year was when our demonstration garden received recognition from Communities in Bloom, a national program that celebrates communities committed to enhancing their civic spaces through horticulture, environmental action, and community involvement.
The acknowledgment validates countless hours our volunteers invested in creating a beautiful, educational space that showcases how stunning and diverse a xeriscape garden can be.
The recognition also reaffirms what we promise—that water-wise landscaping doesn’t mean sacrificing beauty or variety.
Our garden stands as living proof native plants, drought-tolerant species and thoughtful design can create an oasis that’s both environmentally-responsible and visually-captivating.
The Communities in Bloom recognition brought increased visibility to our organization and the principles we champion. More visitors have discovered our garden this year, eager to learn how they can apply xeriscape concepts in their own outdoor spaces. This heightened interest has reinforced our commitment to serving as a community resource for sustainable landscaping practices, especially crucial in our region where water conservation must be a priority to everyone.
Understanding that education happens best when people can slow down, observe, and reflect, we’ve added a thoughtful new feature to our xeriscape demonstration garden. With support from the City of Kelowna Parks Department, we now have a bench where visitors can sit and be inspired by their surroundings. This simple addition has transformed how people interact with the surroundings we created.
Rather than walking through quickly, visitors can linger, taking time to notice the subtle movement of the ornamental grasses, watch pollinators visit native blooms and appreciate how wide a variety of plants thrive with minimal water.
The bench has become more than just a place to rest but a place of contemplation where people can imagine how xeriscape principles might work in their own landscapes.
We’ve watched visitors photographing the vignettes created by different combinations of plants, taking notes and engaging in deeper conversations about what they’re seeing.
This is exactly the kind of meaningful engagement we hoped to encourage with the garden.
Our newest addition, and an exciting educational tool, is our three-bin composter. It was built by one of our talented volunteers and with more support from the city’s parks department, it has been installed adjacent to the ornamental grass garden.
Composting represents a perfect complement to xeriscape principles as both work with nature rather than against it.
The composter will serve as a hands-on demonstration of how organic waste becomes nutrient-rich soil amendment, closing the loop in sustainable gardening practices.
We plan to use it as a centrepiece for informal education, showing visitors how composting reduces landfill waste, improves soil health, retains moisture in garden beds, and reduces the need for chemical fertilizers.
For a xeriscape garden, compost is particularly valuable, as it helps soil retain what little water it receives while supporting the beneficial microorganisms that help plants thrive.
In the coming year, we’ll be developing new programming around the composter, teaching everything from basic bin management to troubleshooting common composting challenges.
Our volunteers have provided consistent support for the weekly Dig with Sig program, embodying our belief that community gardens and green spaces strengthen neighbourhoods and foster environmental awareness.
These volunteer hours represent our members’ dedication not just to our own mission of promoting xeriscape but to the larger goal of creating a more-connected, environmentally-conscious community.
Through Dig with Sig, we’ve helped cultivate not just plants, but relationships and knowledge-sharing among gardeners at all levels of experience, all while they ask questions and learn more about xeriscape.
Here’s to another year of growth, both literal and figurative, in 2026.
Visit our website (okanaganxeriscape.org) to learn more about gardening successfully in the Okanagan and consider donating to our Refresh the UnH2O campaign focused on updating the demonstration garden, after its first 15 years in place.
The Okanagan Xeriscape Association is grateful for the ongoing financial support of the Okanagan Basin Water Board and is proud to be collaborating on the Make Water Work campaign. Check out the Make Water Work plant list at makewaterwork.ca.
This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
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