welcome!

The McLoughlin Gardens is part of the Brian and Sarah McLoughlin Park, a pedestrian-only regional park in the Comox Valley, located on the traditional territories of the K’ómoks First Nations.

Find out more 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 April to the end of October.

summer programs

Saturday, July 18 - 1 - 4 p.m. Crafting Complex Characters

Saturday, July 25 - 1 - 4 p.m. Setting the Scene: Place and Character Development in Fiction

consultations

Attention writers! Do you have a manuscript underway and would like some feedback? Visit our Literary Arts page to sign up for a one-to-one consultation with Eva Crocker.

poet Yvonne Blomer returns

Former writer-in-residence Yvonne Blomer will offer an afternoon workshop in mid-August.
Sunday, August 16 - 1 - 4 p.m. Beginning a Creative Workbook: Using Mark Making to Think Through Writing

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 four to six-week period for poets or writers. Beginning in 2016, these longer residencies were by invitation. Last year we put out a call for an author of children’s literature to apply for a residency. Vancouver author Michelle Barker was here for a month in the summer. More recently we sent out a call for Canadian writers of fiction to apply for a month-long residency in the summer of 2026. An impressive number of writers applied from across Canada. After much deliberation, the jury chose Newfoundland author Eva Crocker to be our writer-in-residence in 2026.

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. The application period for 2026 will open in early January of the new year. Visit our Studio Residency page to add your name to the mailing-list.

The McLoughlin Gardens Society gratefully acknowledges the support of the Comox Valley Regional District.
We respectfully acknowledge that the land where we play and work is on the unceded territory of the K’ómoks First Nation, the traditional keepers of this land.