welcome!

The McLoughlin Gardens is part of the Brian and Sarah McLoughlin Park, a pedestrian-only regional park in the Comox Valley. Find out more about the park here: Comox Valley Regional District. The park is open dawn to dusk twelve months of the year. Some areas adjacent to the cottage may be closed to visitors when artists are in residence, from mid-April to the end of October.

membership

Yearly individual membership and family memberships are available for the McLoughlin Gardens. Becoming a member is a way to support the activities of the McLoughlin Gardens Society, which include garden restoration and house maintenance, as well as workshops, public readings, and more!

creative residencies

When Brian and Sarah McLoughlin decided to transfer their eleven-acre seaside property to the Comox Valley Regional District, there was some discussion about what would happen to the cottage, designed by Sarah McLoughlin and furnished with treasures from junk stores in the Lower Mainland. With the support of many local organizations, the McLoughlin Gardens Society was formed to run an artist-in-residence program in the house.

Launched in 2016, the creative residency at the McLoughlin Gardens invites working artists to pursue their artistic practice while building community engagement in the arts in the Comox Valley. 

Tucked away on a rocky beach at the end of Tasman Road in Merville, the Gardens provide the perfect setting for quiet reflection and creative work

Extra pairs of gumboots were always on hand for visitors to the "farm," as it was called in those days. Proper footwear was needed for gathering seaweed on the beach, bringing in the firewood, weeding, mulching, and pruning the nut trees, and for going out for a stroll in the rain!

The creative residencies at the McLoughlin Gardens currently include one six-week to two-month period for visual artists and one six-week to two-month period for poets or writers. At the moment, these longer residencies are by invitation In 2021, award-winning novelist Jennifer Manuel spent several weeks at the Gardens, working on her next book. In 2022, visual artist Rita McKeogh returned for a short residency, followed by Marlene Creates, poet Don McKay and non-fiction writer Darrel McLeod.

Studio residencies

Over the spring and summer last year, several poets and writers and a number of visual artists spent a week at the Gardens, devoting themselves to their creative practice.