Immerse yourself in nature.
If you're interested in nature, Vancouver Island is rich in learning opportunities. Develop an appreciation for nature as you explore your surroundings with a horticulture course or nature tour.
Nature explorations on Vancouver Island
Immerse yourself in nature and enjoy a memorable learning experience as you explore Vancouver Island. Each year we offer tours to exciting destinations including Yellow Point Lodge, Middle Beach Lodge, and Wickaninnish Inn. You’ll enjoy the pleasures of nature alongside a team of naturalists, biologists, artists and historians.
Horticulture courses
Whether you already have a green thumb or are looking to develop one, you’ll find inspiration in our horticulture courses. These courses are designed to help you learn about horticultural science and how it's related to many horticultural practices in the garden, nursery and greenhouse
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4 Seasons X 10 Plants = One Amazing Landscape!
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A Weekend Painting Plants and Flowers
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Archaeology and Plants
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Botanical Watercolour Illustration
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Digging Art
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Don’t Trifle with Truffles: Fungal Economies and Ecosystems at the Root of BC Trees
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Ethnobotany 101
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Explorations in Ecotourism: Coastal Treasures
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Field Trip - Strange Partnerships of Fungi and Plants
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Front Appeal
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Fungal and Plant Ecosystems: System Thinking and the Balance in BC Forests
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Fungi and Forest Ecology
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Garden design for beginners
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Gardens in History: Victorian & Edwardian gardens
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Greater Gardens
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How Fungi Attack Our Food Plants
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In the Mood
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Introduction to Biology & Natural History
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Introduction to Seed Saving
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Medieval to Renaissance: The Evolution of Botanical Illustration
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More Bulbs for Your Buck
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Native plant food cultivation in the home garden
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Nature Explorations at Yellow Point Lodge
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Parasites and Companions: The Strange Life of Mycoheterotrophic Plants
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Planning Makes Perfect
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Sensational Sides
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Small plants with big impact
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The Ethical Forager
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Trees of Victoria
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Trees of Victoria I: Conifers
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Turn Work into Play
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What Does It Mean?: Mycorrhizas, Mushrooms and Plants
Courses open for registration
Courses open for registration
Inspired by her work with the RNS Program, Tamara Batory has initiated a pollinator garden project for her neighborhood block in the Oaklands community of Victoria, BC.
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More than half of the earth’s grasslands are degraded from nearly a century of intensive agriculture, resource extraction, and urbanization.
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Our relationship with nature is complex. We usually think in terms of taking from nature. It provides us with our needs and wants. But to be a part of nature we also need to give back. There needs to be reciprocity.
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Julian enrolled in the RNS program in 2002 thinking he’d learn better ways to pull broom, but instead he learned much about planning, and especially the importance of community involvement in ecological restoration. Whenever the courses allowed, he would do his studies and reports about Cuthbert Holmes Park.
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Bringing together ecological restoration and permaculture while also incorporating traditional ecological knowledge held by the Penelakut Tribe is the goal of Adam Huggins’ final project for his RNS Diploma.
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"If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered species: the child in nature." -Richard Louv, 2005
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