Rooted on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia, the Sea Spray Garden Initiative was founded by experienced local gardeners dedicated to boosting food security. We’re empowering our community to grow sustainably—and our impact is growing exponentially.
Executive
Tracy Milsom – Chair
Tracy Milsom holds a BA in Psychology with a Minor in Biology from Saint Mary’s University. She has spent the vast majority of her career as an award winning Media Sales Consultant and running a small digital marketing agency in Halifax. Tracy is an avid and experienced vegetable gardener and a huge proponent of food security through home gardening. She currently resides in East Petpeswick with her dog Memphis and cat Bazil.
Tracey Smyth – Vice Chair
Tracey Smyth is a Master Gardener and avid gardener. She holds a Landscape Design Certificate and ran a successful landscape design and garden coaching business in Ontario, prior to moving to Nova Scotia. She has served in various roles on numerous boards, and has presented workshops and presentations to gardening groups, libraries, Durham College and the Canada Blooms show in Toronto. Her focus is on sustainability, native habitats and food gardening. Tracey lives in East Petpeswick with her husband and pet family.
Jenni Blackmore – Member at Large
Jenni is an artist/writer/permaculture practitioner with a passion for healthy, homegrown food and sustainable lifestyle. Her books, Permaculture for the Rest of Us and The Food Lover’s Garden (New Society Publishing) reflect her life on Quackadoodle Farm (#QuackaDoodle_Farm), her small homestead in Seaforth, N.S. She is delighted to be part of the Sea Spray Garden project because she sees it as a viable way of providing healthy, affordable produce, grown locally and made available to the community.
Wanda Hall – Member at Large
Wanda’s lifelong love of gardening and preserving began while helping her father with the family garden and making his annual pickles. Her passion has since expanded to include sourdough baking and making herbal medicines like salves and tinctures. Wanda is the Past President and Head Gardener for Urban Farm of Spryfield, a past board member of Life School House, and currently volunteers with St Ignatius Church, having started their fruit and vegetable gardens, the produce from which is donated to the Beacon House Food Bank and given away to parishioners.
Shannon King – Member At Large
Shannon King works as a technical advisor for a non-profit called Vitamin Angels that supports nutrition programs for women and children in low and middle income countries, and has always wanted to support efforts to address food insecurity closer to home. She has studied nutrition since finishing high school and received her BASc from the University of Guelph in Applied Human Nutrition and then completed her MSPH and PhD in International Nutrition from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She currently lives in Three Fathom Harbour with her two dogs and loves that she now has her own space for a garden.
Nancy Zwaagstra – Member At Large
Nancy Zwaagstra is a graduate from Mount Saint Vincent University with a BSc in Nutrition. She is a resident of East Petpeswick and retired after spending 40+ years in the food service industry with experience working for several national companies with a focus on the Healthcare industry. Over her career she also served as a member of Mount Saint Vincent Alumnae board of directors as well as on the Mount Saint Vincent Board of Governors. She shares a passion for gardening and a desire to help others, while enhancing local food security.
Robyn Dearman – Student Placement
Robyn completed her degree in Community Development at Acadia University, where she wants to focus on sustainable community practices. She grew up in 4-H, showing dairy cattle and learning about vegetable gardening through their horticulture program. Robyn has always loved getting her hands dirty, whether through gardening, landscaping, or just working with the land. Her little Yorkie usually tags along, keeping her company on every outdoor adventure. Robyn was successfully engaged in an 8 week volunteer student placement with Sea Spray to help create programming, design policy and procedural set up, research the overall vision, and align grant writing efforts.