The McLoughlin Property is one of the newest parks in the Comox Valley

Fall crocuses in bloom

By Keith and Heather Nicol

    In the mid 1970’s Brian and Sarah McLoughlin began to create gardens that were drought and deer resistant along a scenic seashore landscape.The address is 814 Tasman Road in Merville in the Comox Valley and it is one of the newest Comox Valley Regional District Parks (CVRD).  The McLoughlin’s created an  11 acre ecological gift to the CVRD in 2016 as a pedestrian and cyclist only park and we found out about this park while attending  the Woodland Garden Artisans’ Festival the previous day -Sunday, Sept 2.  We spoke to Christine Dickinson about the location and she encouraged to visit it since she obviously thought it was a special place.  Christine was representing the group that has taken over maintaining the house and gardens of the park.

The house overlooks the Salish Sea

Finding the entrance was fairly easy (do a google map search for the address) and we ended up driving right to the end of Tasman Road.  It is roughly 15-20 minutes north of the Courtenay-Comox area.  There is parking for several cars and you can recognize the entrance by the small vertical sign post characteristic of CVRD Parks. The park is accessed by a 400 meter sloping driveway (that is quite steep in places) which leads to the beach accesses, the gardens and the house.  The house is now being used by a seasonal “artist in residence” programme which the McLoughlin Garden Society runs and Christine mentioned they are looking for volunteers to help with the gardens and general maintenance.

Cormorants sat on a rock just offshore

  We brought our lunch and had a beautiful view of the Salish Sea and just offshore on our visit was a rock that had attracted several cormorants .  We wondered around the gardens and came across a second beach access trail. We found some fall crocuses in bloom in the gardens and feel this would be a charming place to visit at other times when the rhodos and other plants would be in flower. We fully recommend checking out this new park and if you want to volunteer then see: https://www.mcloughlingardens.org/.   Also  https://www.comoxvalleyrd.ca/parks-recreation/comox-valley-parks-trails/sarah-and-brian-mcloughlin-park  has more CVRD information on the park.

The park has a couple of beach access points where you can beach comb or have lunch