From Racetrack to Root System: The Sandown Story
Written by Director at Large, Sammy Davies
From Racetrack to Root System: How Sandown Grew
Stand in the middle of the Sandown lands today and you'll hear bees in a hive, sheep grazing (then frolicking away if you approach quickly) in the seasonal wetland, a pair of community gardeners admiring their tomatoes, and a team of farmers harvesting their first pumpkin. It's hard to picture that, not so long ago, this was a place built for speed.
A place with a past
For more than half a century, the land along Glamorgan Road in North Saanich was home to the Sandown horse racing track. The track, the grandstand, the accessory buildings and the gravel roads were part of the community's life for generations and they left their mark on the ground. When racing ended, what remained was some of the hardest farmland you could imagine: deeply compacted soil, buried gravel, broken bottles, and the leftover footprint of a grandstand.
We respectfully acknowledge the traditional territories of the W̱SÁNEĆ people, specifically the BOḴEĆEN (Pauquachin) and W̱SÍḴEM (Tseycum) First Nations, on whose lands Sandown is located. The story of this place began long before the racetrack.
A community decides what comes next
In 2015-16, the District of North Saanich asked the community what it wanted for the Sandown lands. That consultation, led by the Capital Region Food and Agriculture Initiatives Roundtable (CRFAIR), produced a clear vision: a Sandown Community Farm, land that would grow food, knowledge and connection.
In 2017, title to the land transferred to the District, and it stayed in the Agricultural Land Reserve. A reclamation project demolished buildings and began preparing the site, though plenty of the racetrack's legacy stayed underground. After a public call for operators, the District selected the non-profit Circular Farm and Food Society to steward the land, and the Sandown Centre for Regenerative Agriculture, opened its gates to the first farmer and community gardener cohort in 2021.
Healing the ground
We didn't inherit a blank slate. We inherited a puzzle. The Sandown lands cover 83 acres of working farm, meadow, seasonal wetland and forest. More than 20 acres of that functions as part of the District's stormwater system, and more than 20 acres is forest including Littlewood Forest, part of the smallest and most threatened biogeoclimatic zone in British Columbia.
So restoration came first. Cover crops, minimal tillage, compost and compost extracts, hedgerows and a living root in the ground year-round are slowly turning compacted racetrack fill back into living soil. Partners have helped us see what's happening below the surface and in the trees: researchers from the University of Victoria have worked with us on soil biology, and a UVic Sustainability Scholar mapped the ecological zones of Littlewood Forest so we could care for it properly. Community members pitch in too, through programs like Adopt a Patch, which invites neighbours to help rescue and revitalize the forest.
The infrastructure keeps growing too. In 2025 alone, we added two hoop houses, a recycling station, a Growing Young Farmers educational station, upgraded our processing hub, and purchased two walk-behind tractors.
Growing the next generation of farmers
The biggest barrier facing new farmers in our region isn't skill or passion, it's access to land. Sandown's Regenerative Farmer Program was built to change that. New-entrant farmers with less than five years' experience get a renewable three-year term with affordable land, mentorship, shared tools, greenhouse space, a wash-and-pack area and a walk-in cooler. In return, they commit to regenerative practices: keep the soil covered, minimize disturbance, maximize diversity, and keep living roots in the ground.
The first market garden plots went into cultivation in 2021. Since then, farmers have learned to grow on some of the toughest ground on the Peninsula and as one put it, if you can farm at Sandown, you can farm anywhere.
Today, Sandown supports 11 small-scale farm businesses on site, with 12.5 acres in production. In 2025 we welcomed two new farms and launched a one-acre Learning Farm for education and food access. Together, growers on site produced more than 26,347 pounds of food.
Learning Farm harvests went to Flourish! School Food Society, the Saanich Peninsula Lions Food Bank, the South Island Farm Hub and North Saanich Backpack Buddy programs, and to neighbours at a weekly on-site market.
A hub for the whole community
What started as a farm has grown into a regional hub for food systems learning. In 2025, 6,625 people engaged with Sandown, including more than 3,240 online subscribers and 2,175 members of the public.
Young people are at the heart of it. Through our partnership with the Growing Young
Farmers Society, we hosted 1,211 K to 12 student visits from 56 classes across 15 Capital Region schools. Students from Vancouver Island University, Camosun College, Pacific Rim College and UVic learned on site through classes and placements.
None of it happens alone. 53 volunteers and 22 community events kept the land busy, from Flavour Trails to Integrated Pest Management workshops. Partners like Cascadia Seaweed, the Indigenous Prosperity Centre, Farm to School BC and FarmFolk CityFolk bring their own strengths; FarmFolk CityFolk's Vancouver Island seed hub has now grown on half an acre at Sandown for three years. Community input through our public survey helped shape our 2025-2027 strategic plan.
Where we're going
2025 was also a turning point. For the first time since we began, Sandown operated without funding from the District of North Saanich Agricultural Reserve Fund. We kept going anyway, with grants, partnerships and our own earned revenue, and ended the year with a small surplus. We also renewed our lease with the District, focusing our work on the part of the 83-acre lands dedicated to regenerative agriculture education and practice, while entrusting the remaining portion to the District of North Saanich to guide future planning.
Our mission hasn't changed: to empower farmers, restore land, and secure our food future. What has changed is how much ground we've covered, literally.
The racetrack was built for going fast. The work happening here now is slow, patient and deeply rooted. And it's working.Lastly, in recent news, we have been awarded as a finalist for the 2026 EcoStar award in the Local Food category. Thanks to the Synergy Foundation for the recognition!
Come see it for yourself. Join a tour or workshop, volunteer with us, or subscribe to our newsletter at sandowncentre.com/blog to follow the next chapter.
More good news can be found in our latest Annual Report here.
In the past four years that I have been monitoring the nest boxes for Bring Back the Bluebirds project, I see the land at the back of Sandown, behind the wetland, is neglected. A lot of hawthorn, bramble and other bushes are rapidly growing there. Are there plans for restoring that as a meadow land?