Community Collaborators

We're love working with our local community and independent businesses to build beautiful things together. Thank you to the following people and businesses who each contributed to the success of Culture Days!

Culture Days: Painting With Plants (OCT 4, 2025)

Shannon Gerard

Did you notice the giant plant-dyed banners decorating the pavillion? They were made by our wonderful friend Shannon Gerard. Shannon is a ninja of many things, including Plant Parenthood, Plants You Can't Kill, and running her own natural plant dye-ing workshops.

Sculpted Light

We're big fans of putting invasive plants to good use as a natural resource. I went on a mission to try and find an Ontario artist who was working with dog-strangling vine (DSV) fibres, to see if we could paint with plants on plants. I was incredibly excited to find local papermaking artist Joanne Rich, who happened to just be finishing up a batch! She makes beautiful paper from all sorts of local plants, as well as hosting workshops so you can learn how to as well.

Lower Trent Conservation

The folks at Lower Trent work hard all day every day "to protect land, water and living things by working with and inspiring others". They also maintain the conservation areas so many of us enjoy (and take for granted). The large wooden cookies used to hold the inks and decorate the tables were provided by LTC from the dead ash they remove to keep the conservation areas safe for visitors.

Natural Themes

We can't say enough good things about Natural Themes Native Plant Nursery. In addition to ensuring a future supply of native plants in Ontario, they also generously allowed us to forage colour from the abundant plants on their property. Both the goldenrod and sumac inks (and dried goldenrod decorations) were thanks to Natural Themes.

Centre & Main Chocolate

Is there anything that Angela at Centre & Main Chocolate can't do? When we learned she was adding a new goldenrod chocolate for her collection, we had to reach out for a taste... or 30. Specifically 30 samples provided for our workshop participants. Thank you Angela!

Department of Illumination

Look up, way up... Is that a giant acorn?? We were so happy to finally have a chance to collaborate with the Department of Illumination, who very kindly custom made two Acorns of Unusual Size for us. (You better believe one of them is now hanging in our office!)

Nest Design and Contracting

Enjoy that lovely smooth worksurface to paint on? All thanks for those goes to our excellent neighbours at Nest Design and Contracting, who custom made 50 of them! (They even kindly sourced a more eco-friendly plywood option for us.)

Word and Data

The wonderful Peter Wills at Word and Data provides hosting for this website.

Lighthouse Books

Lighthouse Books in Brighton special ordered a copy of Make Ink for us to donate to the Quinte West Public Library. We order books from them all the time, from the standard to the obscure, and they come through for us every time!

Quinte West Public Library

Thank you to the Quinte West Public Library for agreeing to stock a copy of Make Ink, for anyone in the local community who'd like to learn more!

Kyla Vitek Jewellery

Though Kyla Vitek Jewellery was not officially associated with this Painting with Plants event, people always ask me where I got the maple key necklace I wear. The answer is Kyla Vitek Jewellery. Kyla fully embodies the nature-loving maker-centric spirit. I'm incredibly flattered people think I had anything to do with making one of her beautiful necklaces. Nope. I just know a good thing when I see it.