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 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!
Consider making a small donation towards replacing the roof on the potting shed when you renew your membership.

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. Beginning in 2016, these longer residencies were by invitation. This past year, we put out a call for children’s authors to apply for a one-month residency in the summer of 2025. We are pleased to announce that Vancouver author Michelle Barker will be our writer-in-residence next year.

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 call for applications goes out in early January.