
Burnaby’s favourite springtime celebrations expands to 2 days in 2023 as the City welcomes Burnaby Blooms. Join us on Saturday, May 13 or Sunday May 14, at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts and Deer Lake Park.
Enjoy eco-artists, entertainment, workshops, eco-sculptures, family activities, talks and tours, plant sales, community groups, Burnaby Farmers Artisan Market and more!
In addition, we will also hold a micro-event at Burnaby Mountain Conservation Area on May 27, where you can participate in activities and demonstrations while enjoying free entertainment.
Burnaby Blooms promotes the long-term sustainability and the ecological health of our community in a fun and creative environment. Mark your calendars and plan to join us for hours of fun at the City's favourite spring festival.
Free admission and entertainment. Fees for some pre-registered workshops and activities.
Food trucks at Burnaby Blooms:
- Yo Bones BBQ
- Groovin’ Grills
- Cravings Kettle Corn
- Dos Amigos
- JJ’s Hot Cobbs
Just a reminder that parking in the vicinity is limited, so alternate transportation is recommended.
The programs below require pre-registration. Click the links below to register on WebReg.
Time | Workshop |
---|---|
11 am-12:30 pm | All About Mushrooms: An Olefactory Play Workshop + Installation Aromatic Wheel of Fungi |
11:30 am-12 pm | Botanical Printmaking |
11:30 am-1 pm | Hora del Te de Esueno / Tea Time to Dream |
12-1 pm | Create Large Paper Flowers |
12:30-1 pm | Botanical Printmaking |
1-2 pm | Invasive Free Species Hanging Planter |
2-2:30 pm | Botanical Printmaking |
2-3:30 pm | Ikebana Workshop - The Japanese Art of Floral Design |
2-3:30 pm | Painting with Erasers! Learn the Ancient and New Art of Sgraffito |
2:30-3:30 pm | Create Large Paper Flowers |
3-3:30 pm | Botanical Printmaking |
3-4 pm | The Art of Preserved Flowers |
Time | Entertainment |
---|---|
11 am-11:30 am | Traditional Korean Arts Performance |
11 am-12 pm | Dave Gibbons |
11 am-12 pm | Girl A Girl B |
12-12:45 pm | The Don Bryan Show |
12-1:30 pm | Vancouver Morris Men |
12-12:45 pm and 1-1:45 pm | Guitar with Matt Netske |
12:15-1:15 pm | Alastair McMurray |
1-1:45 pm | Rhythm Resource Drumming |
1:30-2:30 pm | Ross Curran |
1:30-2:30 pm | Lache Cercel Trio |
2-3 pm | Kellie Haines Ventriloquist |
2-2:45 pm and 3-3:45 pm | Soothing Melodies on Erhu (Chinese Fiddle) with Ji Rong Huang |
2:45-3:45 pm | Shawn Bullsheilds |
2:45-3:45 pm | Shadbolt Student Dance Performance featuring Salome Nieto |
3:15-4 pm | Pots, Petals & Bees: Jewish, Indian and Portuguese Folk Tales with Naomi Steinberg |
Some of the talks and tours below require pre-registration. Click the links below to register on WebReg. All Talks & Tours start at the Info Tent.
Time | Talks/Tours |
---|---|
11 am-12:30 pm | The Birds of Deer Lake with George Clulow |
11:15 am-12 pm | Meet and Greet with Artist Siobhan D'Souza |
11:30 am-1 pm | The Indigenous Natural History of Deer Lake with John Preissl & Laurie Beeman |
12:15-1 pm | Meet and Greet with Artist Alyssa Schwann |
1-2 pm | Medicinal Plants of Deer Lake with Lori Snyder |
1:15-2 pm | Meet and Greet with Artists Pierre Leichner & Alex Stewart |
2:15-3 pm | Meet and Greet with Artist Nickie Lewis |
2:30-4 pm | Landscaping Ladies: A History of Gardens at Deer Lake |
3:15-4 pm | Meet and Greet with Artist Claire Davis |
The programs below require pre-registration. Click the links below to register on WebReg.
Time | Workshop |
---|---|
11 am-12:30 pm | All About Mushrooms: An Olefactory Play Workshop + Installation Aromatic Wheel of Fungi |
11 am-12:30 pm | Create Charming Paper Globe Lanterns |
11:30 am-1 pm | Painting the Songbirds of Deer Lake |
12-1 pm | Create Large Paper Flowers |
12:30-1:45 pm | An Insistence of Blackberries: A Poetry Jam |
2-4 pm | Nature's Palette En Plein Air |
2-4 pm | Painting the Songbirds of Deer Lake |
2:30-4 pm | Learn Beeswax Candle Making with the Still Moon Youth Committee |
2:30-3:30 pm | Create Large Paper Flowers |
Time | Entertainment |
---|---|
11 am-12 pm | Norine Braun and Alice Fraser |
11 am-12 pm | Girl A Girl B |
11:30 am-12 pm | Cosmo's Clown Circus |
12-12:45 pm | The Don Bryan Show |
12-1 pm | Smooth Saxophone with Ross Curran |
12:15-1 pm | Savoir Faire |
12:15-1:15 pm | Roving Guitar with Dave Gibbons |
1-1:45 pm | Paul Silveria Square Dance |
1:30-2 pm | Chinese Classical Ribbon Dance |
1:30-2:30 pm | Lache Cercel Trio |
2-3 pm | Kellie Haines Ventriloquist |
2-2:45 pm and 3-3:45 pm |
Gentle Melodies on the Guzheng (Chinese Zither) with Laura Wu |
2:45-3:45 pm | Alastair McMurray |
2:45-3:45 pm | Shawn Bullsheilds |
3:15-4:15 pm | V'ni Dansi Metis Dance |
Some of the programs below require pre-registration. Click the links below to register on WebReg. All Talks & Tours start at the Info Tent.
Time | Talks/Tours |
---|---|
9-10:30 am | World Migratory Bird Day |
11:30 am-12:30 pm | Medicinal Plants of Deer Lake with Lori Snyder |
11 am-12 pm | Mosaic Garbage! Create a unique sculpture using recycled materials |
12:30-1:45 pm | An Insistence of Blackberries: A Poetry Jam with artist Claire Davis |
1-2 pm | Deer Lake Heron Colony Tour with Nadia Xenakis |
1-2 pm | Learning to create sustainably with artist Alex Stewart |
1:30-2:30 pm | Century Gardens, Today & Tomorrow |
2:15-3:15 pm | Your Neighbourhood Bats! with Danielle Dagenais |
2:30-4 pm | The History of Plant Hunters: Beg, Borrow, Bribe or Steal! |
3-4 pm | On Environmental Art, Footprints and Other Worm Signs |
Eco-artists
Please find the biographies below for the eco-artists present at the May 13 and 14 events.
Claire Davis (She/ They) grew up on the unceded, occupied and spiritual lands of the Coast Salish peoples of the Musquem, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish Nations in the area naturalized as Burnaby.
Claire uses their diverse practices in poetry, mixed media and performance arts with her fascination and wonder of natural systems through the lens of aesthetics, and biology. As an artist in residence at Deer Lake in 2021, Claire began to explore the settled histories of Deer Lake and the many ways people build their evolving connection with this place for the spoken word installation, Dear Lake: Letters to the Lake. These connections drew her to consider how systems in nature can inform understandings of the construction and destruction of systems in community. This idea brought them to look more symbolically at the encroachment of introduced species and their affect on resources in their environment. In RECIPROCITEA, Davis attempts to overlay many of these intersecting ideas for the ways one can disrupt systems of colonization.
Claire's poetic style often searches the space before or after thresholds, and within the liminal longings of human experience. Relying heavily on metaphor and stripped moments, they investigate a generative and possibly disruptive understanding of memory-keeping through place-based arts.
Her workshop will look at invasive plant species as a place of inspiration for poetry and decolonization in an interactive field guide process using shifted perspectives and some fun.
Siobhan D'Souza is a creative young entrepreneur from the Fraser Valley in Beautiful British Columbia.
She has used her creative skills to create incredible fashion art using upcycled materials and a variety mediums including fresh florals and thermoplast. Shiverz has collected a fashion portfolio of her unique designs and concepts photographed by some of Canada most talented photographers.
Many of these gorgeous photographs have been published in local and international magazines, blogs and social media sites.
Pierre Leichner left a thirty-five-year career as an academic psychiatrist for that of an artist. This desire was fueled by a lifelong dream and also by his dismay at the direction our health care system has been taking.
His practice has now evolved to be a composite of socially engaged art, environmental art, and installation art. Pierre uses various mediums as needed to explore an issue and because of his interest in creating multi-sensory works to better understand and communicate.
Nickie Lewis
Nickie Lewis is a visual artist who currently specializes in creating organic eco-sculptures using sticks, moss, and other plants. She aims to use her art to help educate people about the impact we have on our environment, and to help spread a little earthly magic into unexpected places.
Brenna Maag is a settler artist living on the unceded, ancestral, and occupied territories of the Scowlitz, Matsqui, Kwantlen, and Leqá:mel First Nations. Aside from making art, she spends her time hassling her family to go outside, knitting, puttering in her garden, and watching the chickadees eat from the sunflowers. She is very grateful for the support of her ‘village’ in helping her make art.
Alyssa Schwann
Alyssa Schwann is a designer and environmental artist with projects and professional experience in North America, Britain, and the Netherlands. In Europe Schwann worked in Rotterdam for several years as a project leader and designer in the office of West 8 Urban Design and Landscape Architecture, with a focus on parks, gardens and public space, including the high-profile urban design projects such as Toronto’s Central Waterfront and Governors Island, in New York City. Prior to West 8, she lived in London, England and worked for Chris Blandford Associates on large-scale urban design and infrastructural projects, environmental impact assessments, and historically listed parks and gardens.
Alex Stewart is a Fraser Valley-based environmental artist and muralist specializing in stencil art. Studying at the University of the Fraser Valley, he received a Diploma of Visual Arts in 2011 and has continued to evolve his practice since then.
Stewart’s work focuses on creating a narrative for the continued efforts toward sustainability and environmental preservation. He creates in natural settings such as the forests of British Columbia in order to humanize our environment. The result is a merging of street art and plein air depicting soft, ephemeral female figures interacting with nature. Stewart’s public mural work also reflects these values by bringing the natural world into the urban.
The programs below require pre-registration. Click the links below to register on WebReg.
Time | Workshop |
---|---|
11:15 am-12 pm |
Make a Fresh Pansy Wreath |
11:45 am-1:15 pm | Create a Bee Friendly Flower Planter |
1:30-2:15 pm | Make a Fresh Pansy Wreath |
2-4 pm | Blooming Spring Lanterns |
2:15-3:45 pm | Create a Bee Friendly Flower Planter |
2:45-3:30 pm | Make a Fresh Pansy Wreath |
Time | Entertainment |
---|---|
11 am-12 pm | The Wilson-Gibbons Duo |
12:30-1:15 pm | Boris Favre & Allan Dionne |
1:30-2:30 pm | Molly Mackinnon & Doug Gorkoff Duo |
3-3:45 pm | Michelle Carlisle |
Some of the programs below require pre-registration. Click the links below to register on WebReg. All Talks & Tours start at the Info Tent.
Time | Talks/Tours |
---|---|
11 am-12:30 pm | Burnaby Mountain Photography Tour (with Indigenous History) with John Preissl & Laurie Beeman |
11 am-12:30 pm | Burnaby Mountain Medicinal Plants Tour with Lori Snyder |
12-1 pm | Mosaic Garbage! Create a unique sculpture using recycled materials |
1:30-2:30 pm | Your Neighbourhood Bats! with Danielle Deganais |
1:30-3 pm | Burnaby Mountain Photography Tour with Indigenous History |
2:15-3:15 pm | Birds and Blooms Discovery Walk on Burnaby Mountain |

Mayor Hurley sits with Eco-sculpture at Burnaby Blooms
Photo credit: Sarah Race

Festival goer enjoys the floral arbour
Photo credit: Sarah Race

Eco-art installation
Artwork credit: ShiverZ Designs, artist Siobhan D’Souza
Photo credit: Sarah Race

Eco-art installation
Artwork credit: The Wizards Makery, artist Nickie Lewis
Photo credit: Sarah Race

Eco-art installation
Artwork credit: ShiverZ Designs, artist Siobhan D’Souza
Photo credit: Sarah Race