About Us



Lush Valley is a charitable, non-profit community grassroots organization focusing on food security.
We support food related projects to educate and empower the people of the Comox Valley towards personal wellness, community health and environmental stewardship.
We support local, sustainable food production at home and on the farm.
LUSH  = Let Us Share the Harvest

Food Security exists when all people, at all times, have dignified access to nutritious, safe, personally acceptable and culturally appropriate foods, produced in ways that are environmentally sound and socially just.


Fruit Tree Program


Commercial Kitchen



Surplus Food Distribution Project
    St. Joseph’s Nutritional Services Department has been participating in a Food Redistribution Pilot Project since April 2010.
The goal of this project is to direct surplus food from Health Care Facilities, which would otherwise go to waste, to social service agencies supporting the immediate food needs of food insecure individuals and families within our communities. In this project surplus food is packaged, labelled, dated and safely stored until pick up by Lush Valley Food Action Society.
St. Joseph's is donating a variety of food items that have not been used on the tray line such as shepard’s pie, macaroni and cheese, turkey tetrazzini, beef and vegetable casserole.
Vancouver Island Health Authority is coordinating the project and partners include VIHA Food Security, VIHA Environmental  Health, VIHA Community Nutritionist and Lush Valley Food Action Society.

During the school year, the food from St. Joesph's is delivered to Lake Trail Middle School to be used in their food programing and for families in need. When school is not in session food has been delivered to the Eureka Clubhouse ( a social club for people with severe mental illness) and Lilli House, the women's shelter of the Comox Valley Transition Society.


History of the Lush Valley Food Action Society

Lush Valley is the result of a workshop facilitated in the winter of 1998 in the Comox Valley by Denise Nadeau, WOMEN THINKING GLOBALLY, ACTING LOCALLY. We identified the local issues of poverty and food as ones on which we wanted to work, and discussed how we could organize in our community.
in this time of rapid change to a global economy, people can feel bewildered, lost and disempowered. Women and children especially are the losers in globalization, seeing their quality of life dimish. But rapid change leads to opportunity and creativity- such as the resurgence of interest in communities and local solutions.
One of the participants was aware of a program that had started in Ontario called the Good Food Box, a bulk buying program for fresh fruits and vegetables.
The Good Food Box became our first program and ran from 1999 to 2002.  The Fruit Tree program began in 2002 and is now in its 10th year.

The organization became a Society in Feb. 2000
The founding Board of Directors were:
Kate Fairley
Dianne MacLean
Kathy Keelan
Alice Bullen
Jean duGal