Vote for a native plant Learning Garden, and more projects too

Check this out: by voting here you can help fund LEAF’s proposed native plant Learning Garden.

The garden will be at Artscape Wychwood Barns in Toronto and "will feature between 100-150 plant species, all of them native to Toronto. Visitors will travel along a winding path where they will be introduced to garden categories such as woodland, grassland and aquatic. Each species will be accompanied by a sign that details: its growing conditions; whether it attracts pollinators such as bees and butterflies –vital components of an ecosystem and to food production – or songbirds; whether it is edible - and if so how to prepare it; as well as its historic uses and any folklore surrounding it. The signs will also indicate which plants are endangered or threatened and other rare facts. This demonstration garden and its complementing programs focus on education, community leadership, volunteerism, youth and hands-in-the-dirt participation."

Everyone gets two votes a day, and rare got my other vote, because there's nothing like the real thing! Thankfully there isn't a conflict - they can both win.

Urban Wildlife and Human Relationships

Mink fishing at Sam Smith Park
photo by Carl a.k.a. "Snapnclk"

Urban Wildlife and Human Relationships
Thurs Nov 19th, 7PM
Presented by Friends of Sam Smith Park
1 Colonel Sam Smith Park Dr.,
Kipling and Lakeshore Blvd West, Etobicoke ON
Assembly Hall, North Room

Please join Friends of Sam Smith Park as Dave Taylor from the Riverwood Conservancy in Mississauga talks about his organization's efforts to save and enhance wildlife habitat in an urban setting, their goal to stimulate community awareness by providing educational programs and the opportunity for stewardship activities. Free admission. Everyone welcome.

From the Citizens Concerned About the Future of the Etobicoke Waterfront (CCFEW) mailing list. Check out the CCFEW website or subscribe to their email list by emailing subscribe@ccfew.org with "Please ADD this address to the CCFEW mailing list" in the subject line.

Events (and some after-the-fact advice)

LEAF Tree Tenders Training
Register NOW
Sat Nov 21 10-4
Tues Nov 24 5:30-8:15pm
Sat Nov 28 10-4
This 15 hour training program is designed for individuals who want to gain tree-related knowledge and skills. If you’ve always wanted to learn more about how trees work, tree planting and tree care, this is the course for you! Riverdale Library (Broadview and Gerrard), Toronto. $50 plus GST. Course manuals are available for $10 (highly recommended but not mandatory).

The 16th Annual A.D. Latornell Conservation Symposium
Weds-Fri Nov 18-20th
Alliston ON
This is a gathering of mostly folks from Ontario's Conservation Authorities (CA's) but open to everyone. Also noticed that this year's symposium is preceded by "Groundwater & Geology: Foundation for Watershed Planning" on Tues Nov 17th

Ontario Urban Forest Council (OUFC) Annual Conference and AGM
"Tree Preservation and the Planning Process: Moving Ahead"
Last week
U of Guelph Arboretum
Sorry about the news after the fact - the past 6 months were an unusual time for me. Here's the conference programme. They sold out by the way (the good kind of sold out, I mean). If they post links to the presentations like they did last year (I'm still loving a few of those), I'll add that here. Links relevant to this year's theme: Ontario Heritage Tree Alliance and their Heritage Trees Protection Toolkit.

Old sugar maple canopy at Baker's Sugar Bush, Vaughn

3 things strike me about the conferences:

1. Accessibility / cost: While I'm annually priced out of Latornell, the OUFC conference even has an "unwaged" rate. But, regarding Latornell, now I notice this (also dated) piece of information: “Are you a student registered in an Ontario university or college or an individual affiliated with an Ontario not-for profit/community conservation organization interested in attending Ontario’s premier conservation symposium? Successful grant recipients receive a 3 day registration, 2 nights shared accommodation and a special grant recipient networking session. Check out the grant application form. Applications due September 28, 2009. For additional information please contact Clare Mitchell at latornellgrant@conservationontario.ca“ ...Uh, there's a grant? Like me, you might want to copy and paste this as a reminder into your calendar for next year.

2. The speakers and presentations still work after the conferences are over: like any other AGM or conference, the programmes (both current and previous years) direct you to speakers / presenters and workshop leaders. I saw High Park Volunteer Stewardship Program's Jane Schmidt tap this vein beautifully last year when she invited a few recent OUFC conference presenters over to the park's Winter Speaker's Series, where each adjusted their presentations to fit the park and the audience. It was an excellent series and there was more time for direct questions and discussion with the presenters too.

3. My embarrassment at posting them at-the-last-minute or too late: if you subscribe to these newsletters (or follow them online), you'll have plenty of notice about these conferences, and other cool events too!

• Ontario Nature Network News. Click here to submit your e-mail to their listserve
• Carolinian Canada Coalition's free monthly e-news. Click here to submit your e-mail to their listserve, or see their archives here
• OUFC's Tree Whispers
• LEAF's Newsletter

And please help yourself to this ongoing list of events calendars too!

Why is everybody here so... white?

No, it's not always the case, but I'm surprised how often I've asked myself that question at meetings and events in a city as diverse as Toronto, when the matters-at-hand are common spaces, and collective natural heritage at that. If you've asked the same question yourself, you might be interested in these outreach (inclusion) initiatives:

The Sustainability Network: Ethnic Media and Communications Workshop
Friday Nov 20th, 10-4
YMCA of Greater Toronto, 42 Charles Street East, 9th Floor.
$90 for organizations with budgets under $250K $120 for organizations with budgets over $250K.

Also:

GreenHere's new Tree Care Guides "Easy as One, Two, Tree" are now available in English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, Chinese and Polish. To get yours, email treesforlife@greenhere.ca with your name and address. If you live in Davenport West, you can request a tree care guide free of charge.

Tomorrow / Sunday Nov 15th: A Party In Honour and Support of Dagmar Baur

"Daggie"
Photo by Eric Beldowski

Sunday, November 15th
4pm - 8pm
Location: Green Barn
Address: 601 Christie Street, Toronto
http://event.pingg.com/Dagmar

Hello friends,

One of the leaders of the community garden movement in Toronto, Dagmar Baur, is now in a tough battle with cancer. For those of you who may not know Dagmar very well, she has worked tirelessly for years to support gardens, naturalization projects and community arts. She is a champion of making gardening more accessible to people who live on low incomes and come from diverse cultures. Dagmar has enriched both her own neighbourhood (engaging Bain Co-op members in greening projects) and across the city. York Community Services, Black Creek Farm and the Toronto Community Garden Network have all been strengthened by her wisdom, experience and passion.

Dagmar’s spirits are high but like everyone at one point or another, she needs our help. Some extra money for Dagmar would go a long way in improving her quality of life now. The gardening, naturalization and art communities in Toronto have benefited from many years of Dagmar’s commitment, knowledge and giving nature. Now it’s time to give something back.

Please join us at the Green Barn, 601 Christie Street, on Sunday, November 15 from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Come for the long haul or a few minutes – it’s your choice.

Sincerely,

Helen Mills, Rhonda Teitel-Payne, Lorraine Johnson, Zora Ignjatovic, Jen Volk, Laura Berman, Roberta Stimac and James Kuhns

P.S. – If you can’t make it, you can still help! Cheques made payable to Rhonda Payne or Helen Mills can be mailed to: 203 Westlake Avenue, Toronto ON M4C 4S6. Any Alterna Savings branch will take donations payable to account 4920092.

Letters, cards, prayers and positive thoughts are important too! Feel free to bring greetings for Dagmar on the 15th or send them to 203 Westlake. Let’s return some of the love and support Dagmar has shared with us over the years.

If you want to learn more about Dagmar please check "Heritage Toronto" website for a story "Finding Home in the Bain Co-op". It's about her becoming a gardener.

Autumn orange at the bluffs

... big old oak overlooking a bluff landscape full of bright & burnt autumn oranges, perfectly punctuated by birch trees! Can I nominate mother nature for a design award? :) These are the bluffs closest to Highland Creek (east Scarborough) along Lake Ontario. I love sending pics like these back home, out of pride and, ok, a little bit out of mischief: fun unhinging folks' misconceptions about what life in the "big city" looks like.

Today: Rallying for the right to a naturalized front Garden

Sorry for the last minute notice, but I just got this myself:

From: Susan Poizner [mailto:susan.poizner@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Monday, November 09, 2009 11:40 PM
To: growingforgreen@mylists.ca
Subject: Rallying for the right to a naturalized front Garden

Hi All,

Those who attended the rose workshop last spring with speaker Ethyl Freeman, might remember attendee Sheri-Lyn Safir, who is president of the Rose Society of Ontario.

Sheri has a naturalized front yard and due to complaints she might have to cut her front yard planting down.

Sheri-Lyn, together with author and designer Lorraine Johnson, will be appearing at a City Hall committee meeting on Tuesday to fight for the right to have a naturalized front yard and they're looking for support from more folks in our community.

If you can make it, here's where to go:

Tuesday Nov 10, 3pm
City Hall
100 Queen St West
2nd floor
Committee Room 1

If you're willing to say a few words to the committee in support of naturalized front yards in the community then please give Shari-lyn a call on 416 789 4922.

Goldenrod

Had to include a pic of goldenrod because the asters in the pics below looked lonely to me w/o goldenrod buddies.

Click through the pic: it's zoomed-in, but otherwise unaltered. I have no idea why it turned out looking more like a painting than a photograph. Looks like brush strokes.

Apparently there are 29 goldenrod species in Ontario (32 in Canada), and 'the' book a native plant girl should buy is "Goldenrods of Ontario" by John Semples and Gordon S. Ringius, University of Waterloo. I'll have to call U. of Waterloo bookstore to see if they still have copies.

Aster ID

Asters spending ray petals...

...like ribbon curls.

Come autumn, aster and goldenrod ID still march me back to my field guides.

My best on this one? Purple-stemmed or swamp aster Symphyotrichum puniceum. var. puniceus, a wonderfully common native species.

For online aster ID, try Walter Muma’s Learning Asters in Ontario.

Berberis - you suck.

Unfortunately I had to miss the Ontario Invasive Plant Council's AGM yesterday :(

At the very least, I can mark it with this little PSA:

Some invasive plants are no one's fault: I mean, I've never met anyone who cultivates and sells DSV (ok - there are 2 idiots I haven't met who sell it online).

And then there are the exotic invasive ornamental horticultural plants that are grown, and sold and planted en masse in gardens across... the planet. Like Winged Euonymous (I cringe every time some one calls this "Burning Bush" - that's what our Eastern Wahoo is called -- pls don't be confused. I have the same complaint w/ that purple garden centre exotic thing most people call "Sand Cherry").

And this year, more than I've seen before, Japanese Barberry Berberis thunbergii was thrown at us from the ornamental gardening machine like a glittery gravel iceball to the teeth. You may have heard the noise, it sounded like a lot of 'Ooh ah - leaves come in new 'bonanzas' of 'gold' and more 'glowing' shades of 'rose' than, well, last year. A no brainer yellow & purple contrasting colour combo? Then you must buy and plant one of each!'

Piss off.

They even rebranded the common name to "Berberis" -- I imagine "Japanese Barberry" was setting off too many folks' exotic-alert alarm bells. Or maybe the old name just sounded too... not "NEW!"

Buying and gardening w/ a Berberis is like... absent-mindedly tucking in a few land mines into the yard, or setting up the birds (folks 'love' visiting their garden) to randomly drop biological weapons out of their ass on to their own habitat, indefinitely.

Last week alone I saw Berberis naturalized in 2 GTA watersheds' natural area sweet spots. And I mean sweet spots: one of those Berberis, w/ a lot of berries/seeds too (twists my tongue with "prolific" + "profligate". If it were on facebook I'd friend all its ovaries/gf's just to say "prick gave me an STD" or even "asked me to have sex w/ his dog" or anything else that might diminish its chance of reproducing. BTW: I confess: we have a running plant 'profile' joke in our house we call 'faceplant') was invading a seep (a niche I know I can't recreate and sustain) in the middle of one of our best local patches of two Gentian species. Well, one of our best patches, for now. Berberis - you suck.

Events This Week

Weds Oct 28th
The Ontario Invasive Plant Council
2009 AGM and Invasive Plant Symposium
Cobourg ON

There will be more than 25 speakers presenting on a range of important invasive plant topics including the cosmetic pesticides ban, new invasive plants in Ontario, control options, new research, new programs and many other topics to help in the fight against invasive plants. -- Please visit the OIPC website for more information.

Contact oipc@ofah.org to be added to their mailing list!

Weds October 28, 7:30 p.m
From English Roses to Canadian Wildflowers -
Susanna Moodie and Catharine Parr Traill in Two Worlds
Lecture by Micheal Peterman
Toronto Botanical Garden

Sisters Susanna and Catharine Strickland emigrated to Upper Canada (1832) and wrote about the natural world that they found in their adopted country. Their writings during a time of great change provide a first hand look of the natural world and its inhabitants from the point-of-view of two superb observers. Floral Hall, Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Admission: Public $20 / Students $15 / TBG members free. Door sales only. Limited seating.

I finally got to read these ladies, and Lady Simcoe, and other early North American botanical books thanks to archive.org. So now, not only can I access these books (some were too rare) I can even search most of their book's entire text, by keyword. Ridiculously cool library.

Thurs-Sat October 29th - 31st
Ontario Land Trust Alliance's 2009 Gathering
Kempenfelt Conference Centre, Barrie ON
OLTA conference includes workshops, and even one-on-one clinics.

Sat October 31, 10AM -Noon
Windfield Park Tree and Shrub Planting

Join Friends of the Don East and the City of Toronto Parks & Rec's Community Stewardship and Parkland Naturalization as we add to the large planting done by students from York Mills Collegiate this past spring. We will work on adding another 250 trees and shrubs. 800 trees have already been planted here! Shovels and gloves will be provided. 120 Banbury Road. We'll be working just below the Banbury Community Centre, at the bottom of the hill. Park for free at the Community Centre. By Transit: Take bus York Mills 95 from York Mills Subway Station east to Sandfield Road. Walk south on Sandfield Road until it turns into Penwood Road. Continue south until it curves to the left. Enter Windfields Park on south side. Walk along park trail and turn right at junction. Walk down hill. Planting site is at bottom of hill.

Come out 'n plant trees on Saturday!

Sat. October 24
10AM - 12 Noon
Wetland Tree and Shrub Planting
Goulding Estate, Taylor Creek

Help Friends of the Don East reforest a wetland edge area next to the Taylor Creek Park/Goulding Estate Wetland. (Cool site. Be sure to see the back ponds!). 301 Dawes Road. Partner: City of Toronto Parks & Rec Community Stewardship and Parkland Naturalization

Sat Oct. 24, 3-5:PM
Community Tree Planting
Port Union Village Common Park, Scarborough

"Evergreen, the City of Toronto and Waterfront Toronto are teaming up once again with for a community tree planting event at Port Union Village Common Park in Scarborough. Help create a green and beautiful waterfront by taking part in the upcoming planting. Located at the foot of Port Union Road. For more information and to RSVP, contact claire@evergreen.ca

Acorns in their woolies

This pic of felted acorns, from truLuxe on Etsy, is currently making a cute autumn desktop background on my 'puter screen :)

Essex, Kent and Lambton counties: native plant resources

Today and tomorrow the Carolinian Canada Coalition is hosting a two-day forum "Caring for Our Coast: Envisioning a Lake Erie Community Stewardship Trail Network"

Many of the presentations at this year's forum (located at Pt. Pelee National Park: just a-stone's-throw from where Gerry Waldron recently found a patch of Kudzu) have more of a southwestern ON focus.

I once knew the area well, for 25 years actually. Born and raised (yup, detassled a lot of corn, swam and ate from all 3 lakes, and later, as an archaeological field assistant, I shovelled a lot of wet clay). Nevertheless, this past spring, when I had to suss out some of the area's practical local native plant gardening, restoration and stewardship resources, I realized I had a lot more to learn.

Here are a few of the local native plant ecology resources I found handy down there:

• Carolinian Canada Coalition's Signature Sites and Natural areas, Significant Stewardship sites and Caring for Nature Factsheets by county
• Ontario Nature Network's member groups for Carolinian West
• The Naturalized Habitat Network of Essex County & Windsor's handy guide “The Naturalized Gardener’s Handbook for Windsor and Essex County” and their Naturalized Landscape Course (usually offered between January and April).
• Tallgrass Ontario especially if you're working in one of the sand plain areas, or if you're trying a few prairie->meadow species that can handle clay
• the species occurrence maps in Gerry Waldron's Trees of the Carolinian Forest - A Guide to Species, Their Ecology and Uses
• Nurseries who carry some species indigenous to the area: Nativk Ecological, Grand Moraine Growers, and Acorus, and Pterophylla Nurseries / Mary Gartshore gartcar@kwic.com
• Lake St. Clair Coastal Habitat Conservation and Restoration Plan's "Section II: Characteristics of the Lake St. Clair Ecosystem: II. B. Physical Characterization". Although this one's out of Michigan it includes good info about southwestern Ontario physiography and vegetation I didn't find through online Canadian resources. This US Geography Service's description of "Maumee Lake Plain" also helped, and Michigan's list of natural communities were insightful too.
• The Ontario Urban Forest Scrapbook I (I still need to buy Scrapbook II, apparently it's out and on sale) by Willem A. G. Morsink, Chapter 4 - Southwest Presettlement Forest from 1650-1800 - An Interpretation of the Tri-County Forest:

"...(F)rom 2000 years ago till AD 1650 in the Tri-County area of Windsor, Chatham and Sarnia, Ontario ...very few well drained sandy and sandy loam areas existed... There were extensive bottomland forests, wet prairies and the general ground water levels must have been 2-3 feet higher before the area was drained in the 19th century.

One can define four woodland-mapping units in the Tri-County area, which is part of the southwestern-Lake Erie section of the Deciduous Forest zone:

• Carolinian Upland Hardwoods
• Midwestern Clay-plain Hardwoods
• River and Lakeshore Hardwoods
• Oak-savannah"

He then goes on to map and list species in those forest communities "useful in classifying significant vegetation types, and ...site-suitable planting schemes for urban tree and woodland areas." -- Invaluable reference in a place where you often can't see the forests for the farms.

Tomorrow: Join High Park VSP for a Seed Collecting Workshop, with Tallgrass Ontario

Seed collecting Sky-blue asters

Seed Collection Workshop

Sun Oct 18 10:30 AM

High Park Grenadier Restaurant

The High Park Volunteer Stewardship Program has a very special Seed Collection Workshop on October 18th with Gavin Trevelyan, Coordinator for Tallgrass Ontario who will instruct us in the techniques and science behind the efficient and ethical collection of tallgrass prairie plant seed.

Spend a day in the lovely High Park Black Oak Savannah, while acquiring a new skill and making new acquaintances. Help out in the ongoing effort to restore and protect Ontario's threatened tallgrass prairies and savannas.

Meet at 10:30 am in front of the Grenadier Restaurant and we will then go to the Training Centre (or work site). Later on, we will proceed out to the Black Oak Savanna for a hands-on seed collection event. Dress for the weather, rain or shine! Admission is free. Space in this workshop is limited so please RSVP if you wish to attend the workshop. A second seed cleaning workshop may be held in the future if there are enough people wanting one.

If you're not already getting invites like this from High Park VSP email vsp@highpark.org & they'll keep you in the loop!

Like to prime? Here are my picks:

Planting the Seed - A Guide to Establishing Prairie and Meadow Communities in Southern Ontario has super useful seed propagation protocols + plant species and guild info in appendices A and B.

And if you're a S. ON restoration ecology geek, check out Tallgrass Communities of Southern Ontario - A Recovery Plan. Prepared in part for the World Wildlife Fund, this one's a classic. Like native plant gardening, restoration ecology has its trends. When I read this, I finally understood the earlier momentum behind many of the prairie plants and seeds, that passed through even my hands.

I also like An Introduction to Tallgrass Prairie in Southern Ontario. It's written by a former grad student of Larry Lamb's at U. of Waterloo, and yes the spelling needs editing (either get over it or volunteer to fix it?) but it's worth keeping around because he makes some essential concepts easy to understand. For example:

Savannah

Savannah is an ecosystem where scattered trees contribute only 10% to 50% canopy cover. The trees are widely spaced due to competition for moisture and nutrients. In a continuum of ecosystem delineation determined by an increasing requirement for moisture, savannah is the ecosystem that is situated between tallgrass prairie and oak forest. Since the two ecosystems are contiguous, the interdegration between species can be pronounced. As a result of the minimal canopy closure and the resulting abundant sunlight the majority of the understory species are species of the tallgrass prairie. There are however species that are truly associated with savannah. The classic indicator being the False Foxgloves Aureolaria spp. [check out this Downy False-foxglove species report.]

In addition to oak savannah in Ontario, there are also limited areas of cedar savannah in Southwestern Ontario and aspen parkland in Northwestern Ontario.

Savannah is a far more restricted community than prairie in Ontario. This fascinating community is worth of a website of its own.

...and some good lovin' seed-collecting hands too :)

*

Update: since we're talking about the historic/rockstar moments in prairie restoration ecology, here's a seminal one I never knew. It's earlier than I would've guessed, even has Ontario connection too:

"Theodore M. Sperry was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1907. After completing a B.S. in 1929 at Butler University in his hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana, he entered the graduate school of the University of Illinois, where he earned an M.S. in 1931 and a Ph.D. in Botany in 1933. In that same year, Ecology published a condensed version of his dissertation about root systems of prairie plants. At the University of Wisconsin, Aldo Leopold read the article and arranged for Sperry’s transfer to the Civilian Conservation Corps under the National Park Service in Madison, Wisconsin. Under the auspices of Leopold, Sperry was given sixty acres of old farm land near the Madison campus on the University’s research land. Sperry and a small crew were given long-handled shovels and a truck and told to “go make a prairie.” Curtis Prairie became the world’s first restored prairie, and Sperry considered his work and research at Curtis Prairie his greatest professional achievement.

-SERNews, The Newsletter of the Society for Ecological Restoration International Volume 23 No. 3 (October 23 2009)

Stewardship Network webcasts

A few of choice Michigan Stewardship Network webcast archives are free this week only. Just go here. Also notice that all the archived webcasts are free this weekend too.

i LOVE these!

Try one. If you like it, check out their next free monthly webcast (it's cool to 'see' some of the folks you'll recognize from Southern Ontario restoration ecology and stewardship too!). You can also sign-up online to receive notices about future webcasts. BTW: It's great way to stay up to date with practical invasive plant management too!

*
PS: City of Toronto Stewardship volunteers: pls see this Don Watcher post about how the current city strike affects the stewardship program.

You know your yard is an asshole when...

I was helping someone design a native plant garden on their bare-ass new property. First we figured out her physiography, current and historic land use, and then tried to ID the area's historic natural heritage through historic and current records and surveys. Some times that's all it takes to figure out a site-appropriate native plant community model.

Historically her yard was likely a bottom land forest on a clay lake plain, and a riparian flood zone too. Problem was, the water had long since been drained (extensive network of channels and dikes) and the area is now high value crop land and urban residential. What do you do with that kind of clay when the water processes are gone?

Further complication: species from her historic plant community that we could still use on the site included ashes, butternut and white elm... not safe bets anymore, and other trees like sycamore and silver maple were too big for the fragmented space of her residential yard.

At that point the garden design and plant selection changed from a strict historic restoration plant community model into something called "reconciliation ecology": we were trying to figure out a unique native plant community appropriate to the realistic possibilities of that land, that would still support the area's biodiversity, natural heritage (including wildlife: native pollinators and birds), conservation and stewardship. In this particular case, it came right down to anything ethically locally sourced that would grow in her light, soil and moisture. There would be a lot of mulch involved too. BTW: we wanted to stay extra locally sourced because there are indigenous prairie species restoration projects on a sand plain that begins only one concession away / don't want to genetically swamp them with plants sourced from 500+ km's away. And the woodies would be local and Forest Gene Conservation Association (FGCA) certified, of course.

I told her "Actually, this can be some interesting and creative stuff." And then I reassured her "don't worry, your yard is not an asshole, and it's not going to be one."

However, if you ever need a graphic illustration of how quickly and dramatically someone can asshole-ize a yard with a garden, here's a fresh example.

G1 "globally endangered / imperiled" Eastern Cottonwood freshwater dunes at Long Point Ontario.

Meters away on that same beach, is this recently landscaped yard:

Because every Great Lakes bioregion G1 dunes needs a touch of Holland and Eurasia.

Look again at those two pictures, even click through to enlarge them if you want to.

[Ok, in its own right, and just to fill your soul, especially check out those sweet, sweet dunes: the logs beached from the winter's ice (seems to me they're a happy spot for Fowler's Toads); the wee young cottonwood foot dune starting up near the shore (lower lake levels in recent years, and good littoral zone nutrients: for example in the dross you could see that the smelt still run in early May, though not like they used to up to about 1980); the swale developing between that foot dune and the established mature foredunes: being a big fan of mature interdunal meadows, I can hardly wait to see what the pioneer plant species will be in that swale. I could spend a warm month here with little more than a pup tent and wake up and fall asleep amazed every day just watching all of those processes functioning and the good plants still naturally finding footholds where they should. BTW: what make the resiliency of the landscape in this picture even more impressive to me is that it's not even a restricted area, it's a public beach. But, yeah, back to point of this yard...]

Except for the few cottonwoods they kept to left of their house the place is not only difficult to recognize, it's now an entirely changed ecological function and habitat.

At first I laughed. Then I was angry. I even cried.

For all I know these are decent people, the kind you could trust with your keys, car, cat, kid and a wallet. But yup, their new yard is an asshole. Not just what's been removed and displaced, but what's been introduced: exotic artemesia a few feet away from healthy wormwords; turfgrass species feet from big bluestem and switchgrass. It's not the more popularly recognized asshole yard of the "neglected" / weedy variety, or "what people have to do to survive" or "before anyone knew better". Instead it's one of those deliberate rapid succesions from a healthy local landscape (biodiversity) to "this place could be anywhere" asshole-of-the-misguided-garden-magazine variety. The kind that take significant money, resources, inputs, effort and planning to design, "install" and maintain.

And even if that part of the dunes is "zoned" residential, that justifies nothing. In fact it would only serve to illustrate what a dumb instrument an old zoning bylaw can be.

In fact, that entire dunes area is part of the Long Point UNESCO biosphere reserve (you would have to be occupied trying to not drive over a crossing turtle to miss that sign along the causeway), and the Long Point Basin Land Trust (super accessible and knowledgable folks who publish and present practical public education) area too. Also, their closest retail nursery? Not one but TWO major native plant nurseries (Acorus and Pterophylla) with suites of affordable indigenous dunes species = folks would literally have to go out of their way to buy non-native plants. All of which makes makes me wonder what the hell does it take to appeal to reason?

It's not just that I love our great lakes ecology, and that specific area's dunes vegetation and don't want to see it invaded and destroyed by exotic horticultural species, I actually saw a Fowler's Toad there a few summers ago.

Don't want your yard to be an asshole? Go for native, even indigenous plants and seeds if you can ethically source them. For more local criteria and context, suss out your local Land Trust, Conservation Authority or municipality and what they already have for current and historic natural heritage inventories (e.g. vegetation, wildlife, physiography, hydrology) and conservation, stewardship & natural systems management initiatives and strategies. The links on the right are a starting place for that. And the process of becoming literate with your own landscape's ecology has got to be more than half the fun of having a garden.

Forest Gardening

I know next to nothing useful about agriculture, so I can usually resist writing about it.

But I recently saw someone cut and regrade their yard's globally endangered forest so they could put in what only amounted to a few square meters of hobby veggie garden beds. It's nothing new but it made me think, wow... there have got to be better agricultural models that would have included that forest.

Also in the last 3 years I've seen urban agriculture and native plant naturalization sharing tight spaces here in Toronto, and ask each other what's possible.

I've read about prairie ecosystem models for sustainable agriculture from the US midwest. Good stuff, especially for existing field crop areas where the forests are already gone.

But, lately my mind keeps heading toward a woodland->forest agricultural concept.

I started imagining, composing and recomposing them and their species in my mind (I was trying to stick entirely to native for the longest time, but now I'm ready to accept some integration) for our region.

It's not exactly urban agriculture or any orchards as I've known them, and it's certainly not wild-crafting, or foraging, or nomadic seasonal wild gathering. It's a deliberate integration of naturalization and conservation + sustainable human agriculture, vertically layered, that could work on smaller landscapes (e.g. 1 acre) and larger areas too. Trying to suss it out, I found out I liked Norfolk Alternative Land Use Services, and then bingo: I stumble across a diagram that looked a lot like the same of the idea I had in my mind:

Apparently it's called "Forest Gardening". Check it out.

First thing I did was laugh! :) because just looking at that diagram with its different forest vegetation layers, you can see how easily anyone with a native plant / field naturalist bent raised in "mixedwood plains" would come up with this as a potential agriculture model. Made me realize how impossible it is for me to even imagine how anyone ever developed our current conventional agricultural models.

I can see it working in some back yard gardens, or even a research site, as a forest restoration + agriculture joint project. But I'd be hesitant to advocate it for some public org's sites because I simply don't know how it road-tests with food security and hunger: I have no idea how much nutrition and energy/calories it provides and requires per acre compared to common organic agriculture alternatives like an average small plot heirloom annual veggie garden, or prairie ecosystem agriculture models. The other thing that confounds me are our suitable nut species, e.g. chestnut blight and butternut fungus thins the ranks.

At the very least it's something worth considering when folks are deciding how to share limited land desired, or needed, for food and forest.

"Where can I buy native plants?"

Wild ginger - easy native woodland garden groundcover

Sunday May 3rd, 11-2
High Park Spring Native Plant Sale
In front of the Greenhouse. Click here for list of plants available and here for photos. Everyone welcome. High Park VSP / stewardship volunteers get discounts on spring and fall native plant sales!

Saturday May 9th, 10–3
North American Native Plant Society (NANPS) Native Plant Sale. Ferns, Grasses, Sedges, Trees, Shrubs and Vines. Markham Civic Centre, 101 Town Centre Boulevard (West of Warden Avenue, North of highway 7). Markham, ON

Ongoing:
Most of our native plant nurseries are either already open / opening: check out the "Native plant sales & nurseries" links on the right.

Red baneberry - another woodland garden stalwart.

I like this plant because it's easy, fills out nice, and it's never been a bully. Even cooler? when those red berries are starting to drop, I start squishing some of the other berries on the plant to check for mature (black and hard, not white and mushy) seeds. I can plant those seed immediately directly into the ground and I've had a lot of success. Sometimes, to be extra thorough, I put some of the seeds into a ziploc baggie w/ hard moist sand, zip it up and rub my hands back and forth hard on the outside of the bag just to try to scratch up the seed coat / remove any growth inhibitor they may have. (I do that with a lot of berry seeds, basically i'm trying to gnash its coat like some furry critter would with its teeth, or bird would with its crop.) Now, lots of my neighbours have them too...and the shady city park plots across the street from my house, friends, absent landlord properties who've given me permission to replant them after i take out their weeds.

Problem shade? Try Virginia waterleaf (in this pic, they're the ones at the end of their white-purple bloom). It prefers moist soils, but I'm constantly surprised how well it tolerates less than ideal garden situations, various lights, moistures and soils (does slopes well too). Looking for more widely adaptable problem woodland shade tough guys? Big leaved aster, zigzag goldenrod and woodland sunflower . But caution! Those last two species can spread / colonize quickly - although that might not be a bad thing when you're dealing with problem clay, but they're also allelopathic: produce a phytotoxin to kill / discourage competition from other plants nearby. However they seem to put up with each other fine, and they're summer and fall bloomers too: times when you want not only colour, but coverage to prevent weeds from establishing. So, I plant them in either isolated pockets or super problem invaded areas like places where I'm trying to replant while removing vinca/periwinkle, exotic euonymous spp, goutweed, DSV or garlic mustard.

Pagoda dogwood - easy elegant woodland shrub, good wildlife value too.
Good for under planting deciduous tree woodlands.

New to native plant gardening?
Have a blast and thanks for fighting-the-good fight. The alternative is supporting exotic invasive horticultural crap, and that's not just dull (no bio-regional identity or stewardship), it's devastating. (For the real newbies: ecologically devastating biological invasions through careless horticulture practices are not unique to our region (somewhere on the other side of the planet someone is cursing our native Canadian Goldenrod right now). I forget who I'm about to paraphrase but, "any plant in the wrong place can cause harm." Most of this can no longer be excused as ignorance or casual accident.)

But... even when you are gardening with native plants, what I really wish I could tell you is how to save yourself from regret and grief later. Start with common plants, they'll get your soil back into action too. Also, think about why no wild-digging. No secret about it: those early errors, temptations and stupidities / lapses-of-good-judgement have always been there. (And if you're reading this, then ignorance is already no excuse). I've had my own mistakes, regrets and transgressions. And whether I try to chalk them up to naiveté, ambition, good intentions or recklessness, they keep coming back to hurt me more now than they did then. Rremember any frogs, bugs or animals you injured as a kid? It comes back to feel like that. No wonder, because the results are the same, just not as immediately evident. There's no wiping that slate clean and no real way to make up for it either: native plant gardens are no substitute for the complex fragile symphonies and necessities of the real thing.

Besides, a lot of native plants cannot exist outside of their super-specific habitat. Not just garden magazine and plant tag basics like light, moisture or pH -- but impossible to duplicate soil/plant/biota relationships and ecological processes. Some of those necessary associations are only known well enough that the best minds can tell us that they don't understand them. So bet-my-ass you can't buy it in a bag or replicate it in a landscape-in-bondage.

Our best native plant nursery growers know those differences better than you or me, because they've pushed those limits, out of curiousity or even out of crisis rescue situations at first maybe. What makes them our "best" is that they went on to do it with some accountability and scrutiny for legitimate restoration and conservation purposes, and have some ideas about impacts and sustainability over time. Not just vanity or profit. BTW: a plant that someone poaches today, even if they manage to prop up for a whole three years in their garden before they can say "and then it never came back" (without ever reproducing to boot), is not a temporary success, or even just a Failure, it's shameful. Or think of it this way: the good nurseries are a pre-qualifying test of what can survive and thrive in your garden or not: if a plant can't handle a nursery process, it has little to no chance of surviving your yard.

Native plant sources (like the ones I've recommended above) and recommendations appropriate to your region (e.g. see "Local and regional native plant recommendations & inventories") do matter: if you see crap like "grows in Zone 3-6" be more-than-cautious.

There are more than a few fundamental differences between the plants you can buy from the good native plant nurseries and those that you want to avoid (e.g. distantly sourced, cloned or patented cultivars -- and even poached plants -- at most conventional nurseries and parking lot garden centres). Unfortunately, most conventional nurseries and garden centre staff I talk to still don't know what those differences are.

I've learned most of what I know from good people, and the rest I learned the hard way, with no shortage of heartbreak and damage along the way. My advice? Make it easier for yourself simply by starting out by visiting the good native plant nurseries / sources already short-listed on this site. I don't go out of my way to trash the sketchy ones (although one of these days, I'm bound to lose my patience and let loose), and of course I am not perfect, or done being educated, and of course I don't know all the nurseries. Also, any propagator or eco-restorationist worth trusting can give you hard examples of how they have had to compromise their best possible practice scenarios in order to make a living and keep their business alive in what can be a less than perfectly funded or educated or accountable marketplace (including some big orgs, CA's and muni budgets, mandates and boards). They're also more skeptical than you might be: the best ones are constantly reevaluating their plantings' success or failure, over time, asking themselves which of their efforts are financial, wildlife and genetic "sinks". But, if they're listed on here, or if they've met SER-O or FGCA criteria, it's because they've already proven they can do one or more things (e.g. responsible ethical propagation, accessible public education, collaborative research or consultation, conservation) right.

If you want to learn more than (whatever makes it on to) this blog can teach you, treat yourself just by talking with folks at our local native plant nurseries and events. May and June are beautiful months for it! Bask and wallow! :)

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I've had the luck to help a few hundred folks select native plants for their gardens. It's been an education. Every garden / site is different: land use history, soils, (ranging from contaminated fill -> remnant prairie or forest), topography and physiography, moisture, what folks want and how they use the space. But usually the gardens around here are small, the soil is cultural and the appropriate plant selections are often different from larger-scale restoration plantings that can handle dense suckering or periodic flooding for example (also a tree like Eastern Cottonwood, which i love in good large natural areas near water, is a fire hazard in intensive residential urban areas: i've seen its fluff light up (maybe it was just someone's careless cigarette butt?) and catch four property's wooden fences on fire for example) and both of those plant selection situations are different from the rarest plant communities I find walking trails in remnant areas too. I think what i want to do is start posting pictures of some of the more common and popular garden species on posts like this about native plant gardens, and some of the rare remnant stuff I only find on trails and distinguishing the difference for folks who may not know.

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Red trillium

This red trillium is one of the older plants in my garden. it's thriving into a nice clump right now. I've even been able to collect and plant some of its seeds before the ants do, and with a little help from William Cullina's article on Understanding Trillium Seed Propagation i'm trying to see if i can grow them. i do have some early trillium leaves coming up nearby, problem is it's also close to a white trillium, so i won't know for a few years who's who? until i successfully propagate it however, i'm still skeptical about this plant in a garden (i don't see red triliums in many native plant gardens, so i have a nagging wonder if there's a good reason for that). what i really have to do is buy another one and see if i can cross pollinate them, then see if their seeds grow.

Like most of my plants, I planted it with some bonemeal (yes not vegan, apologies, but, it's a natural slow release nitrogen, and i figure most of these plants are used to get bone from dead animals in the wild) and mycorhizal supplements in their planting hole. this usually does the does the trick. Neat tip: while native plants generally want fungal dominated soil (think mycorhizal fungi -- easy enough to create a hospitable environment for that by adding wood and bark chips and dry brown leaves on top of the soil) and not bacterial dominated soils (instead veggie / annuals/biennials like bacteria dominated soil you find in tilled veggie gardens regularly fed compost). Btw to learn about all that good soil ecology stuff, a good book you can get a the library or bookstore is still "Teaming with Microbes". However, like french grammar, there are always exception to the rule. I'm thinking that red trillium, jack-in-pulpit (and other plants i've seen in the wild have several habitat types including low mucky / periodic slow or standing water, with an overload of slow decaying plants) might actually want a bit more more bacteria / compost. so... while i never apply compost to the roots of those plants (has the potential to burn the roots), i've been top dressing my red trilliums, jack-in-the-pulpits and red lobelia with aged veggie/kitchen compost each spring and fall for a few years now. seem to be something to that. Especially the red lobelia: i had a lot of losses (i'm a sucker for hummingbirds) before i started to faithfully top-dress them compost, now, they grow dead-easy for me!

BTW: Yes, i know that here in Toronto we see a lot of our red trilliums in sandy soils, especially those red & white pine/sugar maple/beech/hemlock low lands south of the old Lake Iroquois shoreline, but, out of town, I see them in sunnier low-land swamp muck a few feet up from of skunk cabbage along stream beds that dry in summer. So, if i can propagate them, i'll be recommending red trilliums for gardens that approximate either of those situations. In my garden, it's translated well in the mesic mostly clay fill that came with the place that I remediated w/ some sharp sand and woodchips and annual doses of lots of basswood leaf litter.

Goulding Estate with Steve Smith

Steve Smith - Urban Forest Associates Inc.,

Goulding Estate, Taylor Massey Creek

Along with volunteers from FODE and Ontario Nature I recently had a chance to work alongside Steve Smith at a recent tree and shrub planting at Goulding Estate in Taylor Massey Creek, an east lower Don tributary here in Toronto. That day was a lot of cool riparian woody and his smart range of plants and super-specific site selections really took me to school. I especially appreciated the bitternut hickory, red oak (there are existing remnants on the uplands), butternuts (keep planting those nuts), yellow birch - oh and maybe twenty more species. Blew my mind really, and reshuffled my deck: I don't know about you, but I tend to see or accidentally fall into patterns / ruts / limited repetoires of the same species. Even better? Steve's been involved with the plants on this site for 20 years. Exactly the kind of eyes you want to see the place through. Reminded me of a quote from Lily Tomlin: "If Tom Waits ever invites you to get drunk at his trailer in the desert for a week - do it!" What I mean is, volunteering out in the field and being with folks who know a place and have applied more than a few of their skills there, will teach you things you just will not learn in school (especially when some of the folks you want to learn from right now are too busy out in the field to write or teach). So get out there (or take your chances waiting for them to retire and hopefully have the health and the desire to write a book or teach a course). See the list of "Volunteer" links lower down in the right sidebar, and check out our local Event Calendars.

BTW: One gem I learned from Steve that day: when you're trying to restore our mixedwood forests (remember: we used to have an overstorey of red and white pine here, above our deciduous canopy species - and if you look at the horizon, you still see a few remnant examples of this in the Credit and the Rouge), plant the conifers together with shrubs (ie: not right up against near new or existing deciduous trees) because the deciduous/hardwoods will out shade them too fast. So smart it seemed dead obvious once he told me, but I had never seen, read or realized it myself. That's some cool stuff Steve. Thank you!

Vole @ Downsview tree planting says "Thanks for all the new eats!"

Not just the couple/few thousand new tasty young trees and shrubs either. I bet he appreciates how we broke up that insane clay to expose so many yummy weed roots & rhizomes, because that's what he really seemed intent to chew on. :)

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Tree guard tip: we handled the tree guards (yup those white coiled plastic things) a little different on this site. Because of the voles, we screwed the guards in the ground a little. also, because we were concerned about vole damage (wee dudes, not bigger guys like beavers) I was mystified by the height (long length) of the tree guards ... until it was explained that come winter (of course, but why i hadn't i thought of this before?) the voles will go on top the snow to chew on the bark.

City of Toronto Community Stewardship Sites & spring events 2009

City of Toronto Parkland Naturalization site

Gibraltor Point on Hanlan's Island

The City of Toronto's Community Stewardship Sites 2009 are:

• Don Valley Brick Works (Bayview & DVP) – Two Teams
• Eglinton Flats (Jane & Eglinton)
• Riverdale Farm (Parliament & Gerrard)
• Humber Bay Butterfly Habitat (Parklawn & Lakeshore)
• Nordheimer Ravine (Spadina & St. Clair)
• Warden Woods (Warden & St. Clair)
• Riverdale Park East (Broadview & Gerrard)
• Milne Hollow (Lawrence & DVP) - Weekday Morning Team
• Goulding Estate/Taylor Creek Wetland (Dawes & Victoria Park)
• Spadina Quay (Spadina & Queens Quay)

The Community Stewardship Program promotes community awareness of the importance of urban ecosystems, and encourages volunteers to play an active role in the restoration of Toronto’s natural environment. Volunteers participate in the on-going maintenance and monitoring activities at City of Toronto Parkland Naturalization sites.

Participants work in a team that is guided by an experienced volunteer team leader. Each team visits their site weekly from May until September. By planting native species, watering, controlling non-native invasive species, and monitoring specific ecosystem features, volunteers help to accelerate the restoration process.

Try it for yourself. See the City of Toronto's Parks, Forestry & Recreation's Community Stewardship and "Adopt a Naturalization Site" page, or call: (416) 392- LEAF or email greentoronto@toronto.ca

And check out their current spring plantings and events schedule. One-off events are good way to ease into community stewardship and to see natural areas you never even knew existed here.

Evergreen GTA Stewardship Teams 2009

Native plant garden beds at the Brick Works

Evergreen just announced their 2009 stewardship sites in the current Dig In! newsletter.

While it's not stewardship season quite yet, other Evergreen planting events begin as soon as this Saturday, so it's not too early to email your local co-ordinator soon and ask them to keep you informed of what's happening near you. Also check Evergreen’s events calendar.

The best way to stay-in-the-loop about these and other volunteer opportunities with Evergreen is by subscribing to Evergreen’s newsletters!

And here are the sites:

Brick Works: Help maintain the park every other Wednesday, 6:30–8:30pm beginning May 27, when we'll kick things off with an in-depth workshop on native plant gardening. To RSVP or learn more, contact Claire Ellenwood, Specialist, Evergreen Brick Works Stewardship: claire@evergreen.ca.

Humber Bay Butterfly Habitat: Join the Humber Bay Butterfly Habitat stewardship team every Wednesday, 6–8pm, May to September as part of the City of Toronto community stewardship program. Help remove invasive species and learn to identify plants while taking part in maintenance and monitoring activities. To RSVP or learn more, please contact Colin Lacey, Co-ordinator, West GTA Stewardship: clacey@evergreen.ca.

Eglinton Flats: Make a difference in your city! Join the Eglinton Flats team every Tuesday, 6–8pm, May to September as part of the City of Toronto community stewardship program. Learn about invasive species removal and plant identification while taking part in maintenance and monitoring activities. To RSVP or learn more, please contact Colin Lacey, Co-ordinator, West GTA Stewardship: clacey@evergreen.ca.

Richmond Hill: Hunter's Point Butterfly Garden every other Tuesday 6–8pm beginning May 5. To RSVP or learn more, contact Lisa Fisk, Project Manager, Richmond Hill Stewardship lfisk@evergreen.ca.

Mississauga: Get involved in restoration and stewardship in McKechnie Park, Fleetwood Park and other community green spaces in partnership with the City of Mississauga. To RSVP or learn more, please contact Kim McNeilly, Project Manager, Mississauga Stewardship: kmcneilly@evergreen.ca.

Oakville: Make a difference in your community by helping out at planting and stewardship activities in area parks such as Donovan Bailey Park and Pondview Place. Stay tuned for details on our online calendar of events. To RSVP or learn more, please contact Colin Lacey, Co-ordinator, West GTA Stewardship: clacey@evergreen.ca.

Markham: Join in for restoration and stewardship events in parks across Markham, including the Dennison Road stormwater pond and German Mills Settlers' Park. Take part in educational walks and activities to learn about native wildflowers and grasses. Please check our online events calendar http://www.evergreen.ca/en/involved/events/ for more event dates as they are scheduled. To learn more, please contact Colin Lacey, Co-ordinator, West GTA Stewardship: clacey@evergreen.ca.

UofT Scarborough: Join Evergreen in partnership with the University of Toronto Scarborough Campus (UTSC) to get involved in native species planting and stewardship right on campus. In May you can learn how to naturalize your backyards and community spaces. Special Zoo Event: Come out for a one-of-a-kind stewardship and invasive plant removal in partnership with the Toronto Zoo. To learn more, please contact Alex Hume, Stewardship Co-ordinator, Scarborough: ahume@evergreen.ca.

Last minute events and announcements

Over the next couple of days I’ll be putting together another “Events” post (hint: get your back in shape to plant some trees!). Until that's up, I just wanted to mention these events and announcements:

Tue Apr 14, 7- to 9pm
Endangered Species Act Workshop - Toronto
Ontario’s Endangered Species Act: Out of Balance
The Save Ontario’s Species (SOS) Coalition needs your help. Though we hailed Ontario’s Endangered Species Act (ESA) as a gold standard in species protection when it was passed, alarming potential loopholes have come to light. Without the broad support of the public, endangered species in Ontario may not receive the protection they need. Help us protect Ontario’s species and conserve biodiversity in the province! Meetings will be held in Toronto, Ottawa and Guelph (Thursday, April 30, Guelph Arboretum). The meeting will bring together groups and individuals to learn more about potential problems in the ESA’s implementation; and detail what you can do to help! At the conclusion of the meeting, light refreshments will be served. All in attendance will be entered into a draw to win a stunning copy of The Breeding Bird Atlas of Ontario. The Endangered Species workshops are free. If you have any questions, contact Amber Cowie, Greenway Conservation Coordinator for Ontario Nature, at 416.444.8419 ext.273 or amberc (at) ontarionature.org

Ecological Interactions in Forest, riparian and Agro-forestry Ecosystems, Andrew Gordon from U of Guelph. Norfolk Field Naturalists. See the NFN's Events for more details.

Tues April 14, 7pm - 9pm
The Magic of Mycorrhizae
Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton
Mycorrhizal fungi are naturally found in some types of soil but once the soil has been worked ths quantity of mycorrhizae decreases drastically. John Renaud explains about this natural, symbiotic amendment that works with the roots to increase survival of your plants, reduce watering needs, increase nutrient absorption (particularly phosphorus) and improves soil structure. Members: $23.50; Non-members: $28. Maximum 25. See: Public education programs at the RBG. I posted this one earlier, noting the registration deadline was April 3, but you can always call to ask if there’s still space 905 527-1158

Weds, April 15, 2009 7:30 pm
Small Native Trees for Urban Gardens.
Waterloo Wellington Wildflower Society and The City of Guelph
Healthy Landscapes - Presented by Frank Kershaw
Small yards need smaller trees. Learn about easy care, drought and pest resistant native trees and shrubs. Take home a Free Native Tree!
Free Admission. Arboretum Centre, University of Guelph
Information Displays by City of Guelph Healthy Landscapes, The Arboretum, Guelph and Wellington County Master Gardeners. For more info here or call 519 822-1260 Ext.2109 or 519 824-9476

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Weds April 15, 2009, and Weds April 22, 200

Play a role in the future of the Don River Watershed

Toronto and Region Conservation and its partners are seeking public input on the draft Don River Watershed Plan and concept site plans. Together, we face many challenges in revitalizing the Don into a healthy urban river. Please join us for the second in a series of open houses to learn about the issues and opportunities, and to share your comments and concerns and find out how you can become involved.

-in Toronto, discuss concept plans for the Warden Woods and Mud Creek residential neighbourhoods and Toronto industrial areas. Wednesday April 15, 2009 Open House: 6:00 pm . Meeting: 6:30 - 9:30 pm. Burgundy Room, North York Memorial Hall 5110 Yonge St., Toronto

-in York region, discuss concept plans for the Maple Nature Reserve (Vaughan) and industrial areas in Richmond Hill (Enford Road). Wednesday April 22, 2009 Open House: 6:00 pm Meeting: 6:30 - 9:30 pm. Palisade A, Elgin West Community Centre 11099 Bathurst St., Richmond Hill.

For more information and to obtain a copy of the draft Don River Watershed Plan and the technical background reports, please visit the TRCA Don Watershed Plan www.trca.on.ca/donwatershedplan website. RSVP Required! Call 416-661-6600, extension 5280 or send an email to mvanderwel@trca.on.ca.

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Thurs April 16, 7pm to 9pm
Native Plant Just Make Sense
Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton, Native plants help increase biodiversity and provide habitat for insects, birds and butterflies. These plants have evolved in our climate and soil conditions over many years so pesticides and fertilizers are not needed for them to flourish. Paul O’Hara provides a primer on the stunning diversity of native plants and their use in your home garden. Members: $23.50; Non-members: $28 Maximum 35. See: Public education programs at the RBG. Registration Deadline: April 15.

Thurs April 16 7:45pm

Creating Habitat In Residential Areas and Parkland. Christina Sharma from Project CHIRP! will speaking after the Richmond Hill Naturalists AGM. $10 non members. Details here. (BTW: check out CHIRP’s site consultation page!)

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Volunteer Stewardship Leader The Riverwood Conservancy Missisauaga.Lead corporate or high school volunteers as they plant trees, remove invasive plants, stabilize trail systems and restore natural habitats. Training is provided. Time commitment: one day in the spring, one day in the fall. For more information about these and other positions, please contact Robin Haley-Gillin at 905-279-6792.

Volunteer Conservation Biologist Location: Long Point Provincial Park, Ontario. Interested in field biology and the conservation of endangered species? Hoping to spend your summer outdoors in a positive learning environment? Dr. David Green, Director of the Redpath Museum at McGill University is seeking volunteer field assistants to participate in a yearly population survey of Provincially and Nationally Threatened Fowler's Toads at Long Point Provincial Park. Volunteers will be provided with free accommodation and funds to cover travel expenses. Volunteers are required from approximately May 1st until June 10th. The potential for further work in radio-telemetry studies of toad movement and habitat use exists for interested candidates. All work will be conducted in the vicinity of Long Point Provincial Park. More about the Volunteer Conservation Biologist position here. If you feel this would be a valuable learning experience and if you have a desire to pursue a career or further study within the field of conservation biology then please contact Mr. Morgan Boenke morgan.boenke@mail.mcgill.ca

New Community Stewardship teams

Check out Bring Back The Don's Spring 2009 Newsletter.

You'll see upcoming planting events, a call out for new Bring Back Back the Don Task Force volunteers (including habitat restoration and stewardship), and also this Community Stewardship update by Task Force member and Don Watcher John Routh:

The Community Stewardship 2009 season is shaping up to be a great program. The program is expanding with three new sites added for the Don Valley. Riverdale Park East and Milne Hollow have been around for awhile but one site is brand new. The Goulding Wetland in Taylor Creek Park is a newly excavated wetland between Dawes Road and Victoria Park Avenue. This site was a reed choked wet meadow. It has been excavated and expanded and now includes a ground water fed pond that is up to 1metre deep in places. There will be lots of planting but the primary goal of the new team will be to control invasive species before they get a chance to gain a foothold, especially where the ground has been disturbed by the excavation. Each site will have groups of five to 10 volunteers performing essential stewardship tasks including plantings, invasive species removal, water quality testing and vegetation and wildlife monitoring. You only need to commit to 2-3 hours one evening per week. This year there may be the possibility of an early morning team at one site. If you are interested in participating in this program or if you need more information, phone (416) 392-1948.

Speaking of 2009's new Community Stewardship teams...

You're probably already familiar with LEAF and their excellent Tree Tenders training program.

Last fall LEAF added two Tree Tenders II courses: Tree Tenders II Urban Forestry, and Tree Tenders II Community Stewardship.

That Community Stewardship stream was a new partnership between LEAF and the City of Toronto's Natural Environment and Community Programs Dept (the dept that runs the Community Stewardship program). The course trained its grads to become stewardship team leaders on existing and new sites. And I've been curious ever since about how that will play out this year.

Yesterday LEAF's Volunteer and Training Coordinator Liza Badaloo, gave me this update: "we're actually not offering the Tree Tenders II Stewardship Course this year because it was TOO successful last year. Thanks to that partnership, the Community Stewardship Program was able to almost double their number of naturalization sites for 2009, so they actually don't need any more this year!"

More details about the new sites / teams and orientation night as soon as they're announced.

BTW Liza also mentioned "we just filled up our April and May Tree Tenders courses, and we're now taking registrations for September." Once again, if you haven't already done it, do it! :)

Wildflowers of Riverwood Conservancy

I missed Dr. Nina Katalin Barabas's presentation on medicinal native plants at the North American Native Plant Society's Winter Speakers series last night. Too bad because they've all been so good. (BTW: thank Paul Heydon at Grow Wild! for that line-up.) I didn't realize that, besides already being a great newsletter and plant sale, NANPS could pull off a great public speaker series too. High Park did too. And winter is such a good time for it.

Sharon Lovett (Rare Plants of the Endangered High Park Oak Savannah co-creator /photographer /author and High Park VSP co-chair) noticed I was AWOL and emailed me this morning. Yes, I missed another good one. But what she really wanted to tell me about was a new book she saw there, a field guide about GTA wildflowers, from a place called Riverwood.

Wildflowers of Riverwood - Field Guide of Wildflowers in Mississauga Garden and the Greater Toronto Area
Nina Katalin Barabas PhD and Eva Sabrina Bruni
Mississauga Garden Council. 2008. 184 pp

My first (and apologetic) question: who and what is Riverwood?

Turns out, the Riverwood Conservancy is a:

• 60 hectare (150 acre) park / public garden / natural area / ANSI in Mississauga
• habitat to over 475 species of plants & animals
  
• the "most ecologically diverse community in the Credit Valley watershed” with 200 to 350 year old trees and mixed old growth, young deciduous and mature mixed forests, woodlands, meadows, oak savannah, old fields, tablelands, floodplain, ravines, slopes, wetlands, marsh and creeks.

In other words, it's a taster's menu of our regional wildflowers, including the odd rare one too, like the White Trout Lily on the book's cover.

Nina, last night's speaker, was one of the volunteers who co-wrote this interpretive wildflower field guide for Riverwood and us. "A volunteer effort ... truly a project by the community for the community". :)

A generous community: 150 species in the guide. Check out the sample pages and features at a glance. Natives and common weeds too and distinguishes the two. Sweet woodland and wetland flowers, but not much for prairie / savannah species. Historic and first nations medicinal uses are the most common themes. I love that it tells you when and where you can find each species at Riverwood. Add a camera to that and it sounds like affordable family-friendly sport to me.

This is the first in a series of field guides volunteers plan to create for the Conservancy / the GTA flora and fauna represented there. The proceeds of the sales of this book will fund the publication of those future books and field guides, as well as their outdoor education program. You can buy the book on-site at Riverwood's Historic Chapell House (open mon-fri 9-4) for $34.99 (or$29.99 for Riverwood Conservancy members). Or call 905-279-5878 or email info@TheRiverwoodConservancy.org to place an order. I was able to just call and use Visa and have it sent to me. With shipping and handling and taxes it was $41.49, and arrived fast too.

Once I saw Riverwood on a map, I realized I'm familiar with some of that forest, but just south of Burnhamthorpe at U of T in Mississauaga / Credit River at Erindale. Sweet place! $35 is an awesome price for a book you can spend an early -> mid-May morning with getting to know spring woodland ephemerals along those forest trails, and then to bring home to help plan out a native woodland garden while the nurseries (and blooms!) are in full swing.

Congratulations -- & thank you -- to the team behind the book, and the gardeners and stewards at Riverwood too. BTW: I can't think of a better peer-recommendation for this book than Sharon gushing "had to have it!"

*

Just noticed this: "The Native Herb Garden with Nina Katalin Barabas." Free Seminar at Richter’s Herbs, Goodwood ON, Sun Apr 26th, 2-3 pm.

Events: Sat March 14th -> Apr 16th 2009

Lots of events, and it's not even planting season yet!

Reminder:

• Several of the following events require pre-registration
• if possible, pls RSVP: confirms the event date and place, and lets folks know you're coming so they don't accidentally cancel because of "lack of interest."
  
• I've posted other "Announcements" (including training and some upcoming AGMs and conferences) in a seperate post right below this one, so read on!
  

Sun March 15, 10:30am
High Park Greenhouse – Transplanting with Horticulture staff
Hands-on session of transplanting with Horticulture staff. Learn techniques of transplanting native plants begun in the greenhouse or the nursery for use in restoration work in the park and for our native plant sale Meet in front of the Grenadier Cafe at 10:30am for a two hour session. Latecomers, walk SE on Centre Road from the Cafe parking lot and take a right at Greenhouse Road. A High Park Volunteer Stewardship Program (VSP) event. Need more info? Contact vsp@highpark.org.

Tues March 17, 7:30pm -9pm
NANPS Winter Speaker Series:
"Echinacea and Beyond - The medicinal uses of native plants from pioneer days through today" by Dr. Nina Katalin Barabas. Some of our most valuable medicinal plants such as ginseng and goldenseal are endangered due to years of over-harvesting from the wild. The medicinal uses of native plants from pioneer days through today will be discussed. Nina's passion for native plants will inspire you to grow native herbs in your garden and help prevent their extinction. Toronto Botanical Garden (in Edwards Gardens), 777 Lawrence Ave. E. at Leslie St., Toronto. Mbrs: $5.00, Non-mbrs: $10.00. Email: nanps@nanps.org. Voicemail: 416-631-4438. NOTE: this a change from the previous scheduled presentation: "Green Gardening - A Joint Venture with Nature. Learn how to incorporate native species in the home landscape"

Weds March 18 – Sun 22
Canada Blooms
Up front, this is certainly not a native plant event. And admission's expensive+ parking's $20 (TTC it if you can) and weekends are so crowded you can't see what came for. But... interesting to see some of the new garden and landscape designs and products. So much repetition and hype you can't help but come away with a representative sample of what the conventional hort and landcsape industry is up to these days and will be shilling in common garden mags and nurseries for the the rest of 2009. Each "Best New Plant Introduction" and patented plant make my soul quiver. And all the forced-blooms (some brought in far by plane) bum me out. Worse? The dank convention centre's artificial lighting. (Yes - that's why your photos suck too). Every year I don't know why I paid money to come back. Yup. Every year. Hope springs eternal it seems, and although I personally noticed less than 6 last year, there are the occasional booths with good native plant public-ed. Please thank / encourage / support them - they're exactly where we need them! Various years participants and presenters include: Paul Morris from Acorus; NANPS; OFAH invasive species awareness program; City of Toronto Parks Rec and Forestry, and Lorraine Johnson.

Thurs March 19th, 7pm - 8:30pm
Urban Forest Orientation Session -LEAF
This session will provide ideas, information and contacts for individuals and groups who want to get involved in tree planting and care as well as tree protection in their own neighbourhoods. If you want to find out more about what urban forestry programs, services and resources exist across the city, or if you are interested in volunteer opportunities, this event is for you! There will also be time to network with others in attendance. Meet people who are involved in interesting projects and campaigns and find out where you can fit in! Share your ideas on how to protect and improve Toronto's urban forest. Free and open to the public. Registration is recommended but not required. Call 416-413-9244 x 14. High Park Library, Community Room (main floor), 228 Roncesvalles Ave, Toronto.

Sat March 21, 1 pm
Suburbs, Springs and Sprawl: "The evolution of the water supply system in a thirsty city.
Walk and Workshop for World Water Day . Joint Walk with Riversides . Meet at the northwest corner of Avenue Road and Roselawn Ave. Walk Leader, Helen Mills. Lost Rivers Walks.

Sun March 22, 7am - 5pm
President's Bus Trip to Long Point Hamilton Field Naturalists. This trip is pretty well filled so call Bill Lamond 519 756 9546 ASAP if you're interested. Cost $25 per person, $40 per couple $50 max for a family. Meet at the Aldershot GO station parking lot, just south of 403 off Waterdown Rd, at 7am. We will be travelling by school bus. We expect to be back around 5pm.

Tues March 24 7pm – 9pm
Species at Risk Rural Stewardship Workshop
Halton/Peel Woodlands & Wildlife Stewardship
6215 Old Church Road, Caledon East, 905-713-7410

Thurs March 26 6:45pm to 9pm
Attracting Wildlife to your Garden with Larry Lamb
Are your thoughts of gardening starting to come to mind as the ground is thawing and the snow melting? Then come on out and join Larry for this illustrated talk and learn how to create a habitat that is attractive to animal life especially butterflies and birds. Highlighted will be the plants that you can use (not all necessarily native) to optimize the attraction. Non vegetative ways to attract other desirable animal life to your property will also be discussed. Meet at the rare admin office, 1679 Blair Road in Cambridge. Cost: $5.00. Free for rare event card holders. Register by Tuesday, March 24

Thurs March 26, 9am - 4pm
Growing Perennials From Seed. U of Guelph Arboretum
Growing many popular garden perennials from seed is easy to do at home. Join us to expand your knowledge about seed stratification, potting mixes, light and temperature requirements, disease prevention, transplanting and ongoing care. Come and start spring off early with bright lights, tiny seeds and warm potting mix! Guest Gardener: Lenore Ross. $50. To register or to find out more about more U of Guelph Arboretum Programs and Workshops check here.

Sat March 28, 10am-4pm
Green Roofs and Roof Gardens - Toronto Botanical Gardens
An Everdale and Toronto Botanical Garden programs event . Learn how to create a green roof or roof garden on both new and existing buildings. Join Janna Levitt and Terry McGladeus for this day-long workshop to learn how to create a green roof or roof garden on both new and existing buildings. Rooftop gardens improve air quality and reduce CO2 emissions, delay storm water runoff, increase habitat for birds, reduce the heat island effect, reduce cooling costs and increase the value of buildings. From structural issues to plant selection, costs to permits, this workshop looks at the planning and implementation of green roofs on both residential and larger buildings. Members $80 / Public $85. Still space available for these workshops. Register at Everdale workshops. [Note: if you're interested in this, check out the First International Green Roofs Congress coming up October 19 -22 2009 here in Toronto. "The congress will attract green infrastructure stakeholders from around the world and help spread innovate thinking that will transform our urban landscapes."

Sat March 28, 9am-Noon
Tree Planting Workshop
Credit Valley Conservation Authority watershed.
Requirements: Must own at least 2 acres of land in the CVC watershed. We welcome private landowners with at least 2 acres of land in the CVC watershed to come out to our 2009 Tree Planting Workshop. Learn about our planting programs, the advantages of planting and the great savings available. Let us answer your planting questions, find out how to save on your property taxes through planting and even win a free tree! Caledon Village Place and Library, 18313 Hwy 10, Caledon Village. To contact or for information, please call: Holly Nadalin, CVC Assistant Stewardship Technician 905-670-1615 1-800-668-5557 stewardship@creditvalleyca.ca [Note: if you have 2 acres or more of land anywhere in south or central ON, check out your local Conservation Authority's Tree Planting incentive programs]

Sat March 28, 8:30am - 4pm
Ontario Woodlot Association, AGM and conference
Our Forests — Our Commitment to Stewardship Acton ON.
Registration closes March 20

Sat March 28, 8:30pm-9:30pm
Earth Hour 2009

Mon March 30th
Society for Ecological Restoration - Ontario AGM and Panel Discussion. Our theme this year is "Restoration Planning in an Urbanized Environment". There will be a Panel Discussion discussing a variety of issues, including creation of stormwater management ponds as habitat, ecological value of Low Impact Development Technologies (i.e. bioretention swales), and need for assisted seed migration in restoration planning. York University Toronto. Details to follow shortly (keep your eyes on SER-O's site).

Tues March 31, 6pm - 9pm
Mississauga: No Plot is Too Small: Community Stewardship 101
Evergreen Common Grounds. Would you like to bring nature back to your campus or community? This workshop will offer inspiring examples, tips and tricks, and practical strategies to help you get involved in local greening projects—or even start your own! If you are interested in learning more about environmental stewardship projects on the U of T Mississauga campus and in Mississauga and how you can participate, this is the workshop for you. Location: Rm. 2068B, South Building, U of T Mississauga Campus, 3359 Mississauga Rd. N. (north of Dundas Street West). Free! To sign up or for more information, please contact Kim McNeilly, Project Manager, Mississauga: kmcneilly@evergreen.ca Office: 416-596-1495 x240 Mobile: 416-302-9234

Fri April 3, 9am- 4pm
Urban Wildlife Habitat Gardening U of Guelph Arboretum
Discover how you can feed your soul and at the same time provide much needed sanctuary for a diversity of wildlife - right in your own backyard! In this session you will select native wild plants as well as common garden annuals, perennials, and shrubs to create gardens that are beautiful, and that provide food, shelter, and water for urban wildlife. You will learn how to cultivate evening magic with night-scented plants. Garden maintenance and bird nest boxes will also be covered. Each participant will seed a flat of habitat plants to take home. Guest Instructor: Leslie Work. $50. Registration and payment required by Friday, March 20.* Maximum 16 adults.To register call 519-824-4120 ext. 52358. For more info about U of Guelph Arboretum Programs and Workshops check here.

Sat - Sun April 4 & 5, 9AM
Volunteer for Nature Leadership Training Course
This two-day training workshop will help you develop important group and project management skills, and increase your confidence in leading volunteers in the field. Use your new skills by leading a Volunteer for Nature event with Ontario Nature, or by organizing a community project in your neighbourhood. Cost: $30. See Ontario Nature's Volunteer for Nature Schedule 2009. Location: Toronto. For more info phone: 416-444-8419 toll free: 1-800-440-2366

Sun April 5, from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm
Harbinger of Spring (and other early blooms) with Larry Lamb
This 3-4 km walk will focus on searching for our second earliest, blooming spring flower (appearing after skunk cabbage) - Harbinger of Spring. This small, delicate plant is extremely rare in Waterloo Region and throughout Canada. Scattered populations have been found at rare and participants will have an opportunity to search both the alvar/cliffs and floodplain areas of the property for this early flower as we continue to determine the full extent of the presence of this plant at rare. Participants should also keep their eyes out for other early bloomers such as the white trout lily, tooth wart and bloodroot, which also start to come out at this time of the year. Cost: $5.00. rare event card holders free). Location: Meet at the rare Resource House and Slit Barn, 768 Blair Road in Cambridge at 9:45 am. Register by Thursday, April 2.

Sun April 5, 10:30am to 1pm
Urban Forestry New Volunteer Training/Orientation Session - High Park
Welcoming new volunteers for 2009 Season City staff will provide overview of the forestry program in High Park and discuss volunteer opportunities. Howard Park Tennis Club, 430 Parkside Drive. High Park Volunteer Stewardship Program (VSP) vsp@highpark.org.

Sun April 5, 10am - 4:30
The Field Botanists of Ontario - Celebrating 25 years of incorporation and everyone's invited! Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, Ontario. Speakers include:
John Riley & W.D. McIlveen - History of FBO – Our Beginnings and Progress
Melinda Thompson-Black - Endangered Species Act 2007
Wasyl Bakowsky - Flora of rare ecosystems of Northern Ontario
Mike Oldham - Update on the status of rare plants in Ontario G
Graham Buck - Fire as a restoration tool in southern Ontario
Rachel Gagnon - Working together to address the threat of invasive plants in Ontario

Tues April 7, 7:30pm -9pm
NANPS Winter Speaker Series:
Native Trees of Southern Ontario: helpful tree identification tips, basic tree physiology, and some personal anecdotes. Speaker: Todd Irvine. Arborist and Education Coordinator for LEAF, Todd lectures about trees, leads tree care workshops, and leads tree tours in Toronto.
Toronto Botanical Garden (in Edwards Gardens), 777 Lawrence Ave. E. at Leslie St., Toronto. Mbrs: $5.00, Non-mbrs: $10.00. Email: nanps@nanps.org. Voicemail: 416-631-4438.

Wed April 8, 11:45am - 1pm
Stewardship Network’s Webcasts. Please join the Stewardship Network the lunch hour (11:45 a.m. to 1 p.m. EST) on the second Wednesday of each month for a free interactive online discussion and presentation on various topics relating to the care of natural lands and waters.

Skunk Cabbage April 11 2004

Clear Creek NCC, Kent County

Sat April 11, 10am - 1pm
The 12th Annual Friends of the Don East (FODE) Spring Fling at Todmorden MiIlls 67 Pottery Road. Kick off our season with our regular clean-up operation Todmorden Mills, followed by a free organic BBQ and interpretive walk of the Wildflower Preserve. In partnership with the Todmorden Wildflower Preserve. More info on the FODE events page

Wed April 11, 7pm
Green Drinks Oakville Informal monthly gathering of green minded folks at a pub in downtown Oakville. Join us for a drink or dinner. (905)842-3070. Queen's Head Pub, 118 Dunn St., Oakville

Sun April 12, 10:30am to Noon
Grenadier Pond From Winter Sleep to Spring Awakening - Christine Tu
Free Walking Tours take place every second and fourth Sunday of the month from starting at the benches just south of Grenadier Restaurant. More Info.

Tues, April 14, 7pm - 9pm
The Magic of Mycorrhizae
Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton
Mycorrhizal fungi are naturally found in some types of soil but once the soil has been worked ths quantity of mycorrhizae decreases drastically. John Renaud explains about this natural, symbiotic amendment that works with the roots to increase survival of your plants, reduce watering needs, increase nutrient absorption (particularly phosphorus) and improves soil structure. Members: $23.50; Non-members: $28. Maximum 25. Registration Deadline: April 3. See: Public education programs at the RBG.

Tues Apr 14
Ecological Interactions in Forest, riparian and Agro-forestry Ecosystems, Andrew Gordon from U of Guelph. Norfolk Field Naturalists. See NFN's event sched for more details.

Thurs April 16, 7pm - 8:30pm
Nature Walk - High Park Walking Tours
Meet at the benches, across the road from the south side of Grenadier Restaurant in the middle of High Park.: A small donation will be requested to pay for staff costs for these evening walks.

Thurs April 16, 7pm to 9pm
Native Plant Just Make Sense
Royal Botanical Gardens, Hamilton, Native plants help increase biodiversity and provide habitat for insects, birds and butterflies. These plants have evolved in our climate and soil conditions over many years so pesticides and fertilizers are not needed for them to flourish. Paul O’Hara provides a primer on the stunning diversity of native plants and their use in your home garden. Members: $23.50; Non-members: $28 Maximum 35. See: Public education programs at the RBG. Registration Deadline: April 15.

Announcements, March 2009 ->

So many spring email newsletters flying around; announcements migrating through my inbox. Here are a few of them:

Training opportunities:

• LEAF's Tree Tenders Training Program, Spring 2009. April Sessions are full, you might still have chance for May
  
• Volunteer for Nature Leadership Training Course, April 4 & 5, 9AM. See Ontario Nature's Volunteer for Nature 2009 schedule. This two-day training workshop will help you develop important group and project management skills, and increase your confidence in leading volunteers in the field. Use your new skills by leading a Volunteer for Nature event with Ontario Nature, or by organizing a community project in your neighbourhood. Cost: $30. Location: Toronto. For more info phone: 416-444-8419 toll free: 1-800-440-2366
  
• Trees Ontario and partners are hosting two Seed Forecasting Workshops in June 2009. Essex and Kingston
  
• Organic Turf Management: 1-Day Intensive Workshop
  Wed Mar 25th or Tue Mar 31. Center for Urban Ecology (Ecocenter) Humber Aboretum, 205 Humber College Blvd.,Toronto. Workshop Fee $195.00 (add GST). Note: ISA Certified Arborists earn 3.5 CEUS for organic turf management workshop
• Organic Soil Management: 3-Day Intensive Workshop
  Fri Mar 27, Sat Mar 28, Sun Mar 29 8:30-5:30. Center for Urban Ecology (Ecocenter) Humber Aboretum, 205 Humber College Blvd.,Toronto. Workshop Fee $549.00 (add GST)
  Note: ISA Certified Arborists earn 21 CEUS for organic soil management workshop
  
• 2009 Temperate Wetland Restoration Training Course (TWRTC)
• Training Bursaries Available to Ontario-Based Environmental Nonprofit Leaders from the Sustainability Network. Bursaries are available to help Ontario-based environmental leaders access nonprofit management training. Up to 50% of the cost of training to a maximum of $500 per person is available to help cover tuition costs or registration fees associated with nonprofit management training opportunities. The application process is simple and the turn around time is quick. The application process is ongoing throughout the year with no formal deadline.
• CANCELLED: Wildlife Rehabilitation Basic Skills Course: Ontario Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Network. Cambridge, ON. becuase of insufficient early RSVPs. For more information about OWREN see http://www.owren-online.org
  

Upcoming Conferences:

• Society for Ecological Restoration - Ontario's Annual General Meeting and Panel Discussion, Monday March 30th. York University, Toronto. This year's theme this is "Restoration Planning in an Urbanized Environment". There will be a Panel Discussion discussing a variety of issues, including creation of stormwater management ponds as habitat, ecological value of Low Impact Development Technologies (i.e. bioretention swales), and need for assisted seed migration in restoration planning. Details to follow shortly (keep your eyes on SER-O's site ).
• Ontario Woodlot Association, AGM and conference "Our Forests — Our Commitment to Stewardship" Sat March 28, 8:30am - 4pm. Acton ON. Registration closes March 20
  
• The Field Botanists of Ontario - Celebrating 25 years of incorporation and everyone's invited! Sun April 5, 10am - 4:30 Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, Ontario. Speakers include:
  -John Riley & W.D. McIlveen - History of FBO – Our Beginnings and Progress
  -Melinda Thompson-Black - Endangered Species Act 2007
  -Wasyl Bakowsky - Flora of rare ecosystems of Northern Ontario
  -Mike Oldham - Update on the status of rare plants in Ontario
  -Graham Buck - Fire as a restoration tool in southern Ontario
  -Rachel Gagnon - Working together to address the threat of invasive plants in Ontario

Jobs:

• City of Toronto Urban Forestry, Parks, Forestry & Recreation Division currently accepting applications for Parks Program Officer 1 and Parks Program Officer 2 . Both due 20 March. Also see the City of Toronto's employment board.
  
• Friends of the Rouge Watershed are hiring Tree Planters (5), Scarborough/Markham/Pickering area. Candidate screening sessions March 18 & 19, 2009
• TRCA is currently accepting applications for an Urban Forestry Field Ass't, Urban Forestry Field Crew Leader, Environmental Field Labourer, Monitoring Techs, Outreach Education Programs Instructor, Land and Resource Management Technicians and Ass't Conservation Lands Tech. (Several current volunteer opportunities at the TRCA too, including the Terrestrial Monitoring Volunteer program (across GTA) and Deer Browse Assistant volunteers in Rouge Park.

Announcements:

• The Carolinian Coalition is now accepting applications from employers for the Fall 2009 Work Term. This exciting program, run in collaboration with the University of Waterloo's faculty of Environmental Studies, pairs eligible students with employer organizations for a mutually beneficial research project. The topic of this term is Coastal Species at Risk. Program details and applications are available online at http://www.carolinian.org.
• Call for speakers: Ontario Land Trust Alliance's 2009 Annual Gathering October 29 -30 2009 Barrie, ON. More info about the conference, call for speakers and proposal form on their main page, or give Phyllis a call at 416-588-6582. Deadline for submissions: April 6th, 2009

Field trips (and volunteer opportunities):

• Carden Nature Festival activities June 5th-7th 2009. If this festival or the Carden Plains and alvars are new to you, pls see this post.
• Ontario Nature's Volunteer for Nature Events & Field Trips 2009
  
• The Nature Conservancy of Canada - NCC Conservation Volunteers program events and field trips schedule for 2009 goes online March 16th. (I love their events!)

Volunteer Opportunities:

• Evergreen volunteer openings for Online Native Plant Database Reviewer and Community Greening Volunteer Leader (GTA)
  
• City of Toronto - Urban Forestry Natural Environment & Community Programs has posted their Spring 2009 planting events schedule and 2009 Trees Across Toronto (Sat, April 25th) event locations and details. Please contact greentoronto@toronto.ca (416) 392-LEAF for further details.
• ...and lots more! See the "Volunteer" links on the right

Upcoming Funding Deadlines

Wal-Mart – Evergreen Green Grants Program
Deadline: March 27, 2009
Evergreen Common Grounds is accepting applications for this Wal-Mart sponsored and Evergreen led "Green Grants" Program supporting community environmental restoration projects. Green Grants provide funds of up to $10,000 to local community groups working on urban naturalization projects focused on the restoration and stewardship of urban habitats such as woodlands, meadows, wetlands and ravines through the use of native plants. This grant also supports community gardening projects that involve native plants and food gardening. For full information on eligibility and how to apply, please download a program guide and application form from Evergreen's Funding page.

Toronto Parks and Trees Foundation's 2009 Community Grants Program
Deadline: Proposals must be post-marked by March 31, 2009.
This fund is designed to support volunteer and community organizations actively involved in enhancing Toronto’s public parkland and urban forest. Grants are made for projects on city parkland and public open space within our five program categories: park improvements; environmental education; natural area preservation; environmental related recreation; and communications and public education. Grant awards will range from $1,000 - $2,500. For more information please call (416) 397-5178 or email parksandtrees@toronto.ca.

If you're interested in those, you might also want to check out the City of Toronto's "Clean and Beautiful City Programs" and the Toronto Community Garden Network (TGCN) - it's not just veggies. :)

also see Funding links on the right.

Events to Sunday March 8th

Head's up! Register or apply now for:

• LEAF's Tree Tenders Training Program, Spring 2009
• Carden Nature Festival activities, June 5th-7th 2009. If this festival or the Carden Plains and alvars are new to you, pls see this post from last year.
• Ontario Nature's Volunteer for Nature Events & Field Trips 2009
  
• Evergreen volunteer openings for Online Native Plant Database Reviewer and Community Greening Volunteer Leader (GTA)
• Ontario Nature has an opening for a Youth Programs Assistant, Paid Internship Application due March 2nd.
• Natural Resource Worker 1 (2 positions) City of Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation Seasonal - 7 months, $26.83 per hour, 40 hrs/ wk. Closes: March 5, 2009
• Natural Resource Worker 2 (4 vacancies) City of Toronto Parks, Forestry and Recreation, Forest & Natural Environment Management Section. Seasonal - 7 months, $24.78 per hour, 40 hrs/ wk. Closes: March 5, 2009
• Acorus Restoration and native plant nursery's Summer and Fall Internships. Summer application deadline March 8. (Fall deadline July 8).
• Toronto and Region Conservation Authority currently accepting applications: Stewardship Assistant; Flora Field Assistant and more.
• Credit Valley Conservation is currently accepting applications for Tree Planting Tech; Tree Planting Crew Leader; Terrestrial Monitoring Crew Leader; Terrestrial Monitoring Assistant and more.
• Toronto and Region Conservation is looking for "Trail Stewards" in the Region of Peel to plant native trees and shrubs, monitor trees and birds, pick up litter, and organize environmental events. For info: 905-615-4640x2513 or jcorkum-gorrill@trca.on.ca
• 2009 Temperate Wetland Restoration Training Course (TWRTC). The Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) offers a one-week introductory training course in wetland restoration. Successful participants can follow-up the introductory course with a level two course to undertake actual wetland restoration projects. The 2009 TWRTC is offered through the Grenville Land Stewardship Council, and is fully endorsed by the Trent Institute for Watershed Science a partnership between Trent University, the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Sir Sandford Fleming College. Related: buy the OWES (Ontario Wetland Evaluation System OWES) manual for southern or northern Ontario for $25.
  

Wow - what a solid week ahead!

Tues Feb 24, 7-8PM
LEAF - Urban Forest Orientation Session
North York Civic Centre, Committee Room 45100 Yonge St. Toronto, at North York Centre subway stop. This session will provide ideas, information and contacts for individuals and groups who want to get involved in tree planting and care as well as tree protection in their own neighbourhoods. If you want to find out more about what urban forestry programs, services and resources exist across the city, or if you are interested in volunteer opportunities, this event is for you! There will also be time to network with others in attendance. Meet people who are involved in interesting projects and campaigns and find out where you can fit in! Share your ideas on how to protect and improve Toronto's urban forest. Free and open to the public. Registration is recommended but not required. Register online or call 416-413-9244 x14 for more information.

Tue Feb 24, 6:30PM - 9:30PM
Evergreen: Weeds 101 - Strategies for Controlling Invasive Species Workshop. Richmond Hill, ON. This workshop offers community groups and individuals the knowledge and tools they need to effectively combat the spread of invasive species. Focusing on species identification, the ecological impact of invasive species, and tried-and-true control strategies, Weeds 101 will help you deal with the challenge of those tenacious and persistent invasive plants. Rouge Woods Community Centre (Beech Room), 110 Shirley Drive, Richmond Hill, ON, $10 (Includes refreshments and Evergreen resources). Space is limited. To reserve your space, please download and submit the workshop registration form. You can send the form by fax or e-mail the details to the address below. Presented in partnership with the Town of Richmond Hill and the Town of Markham. If you have any questions, please contact: Lisa Fisk, Evergreen Project Manager, Richmond Hill. lfisk@evergreen.ca Phone: 416-596-1495 x226, Mobile: 416-303-6834, Fax: 416-596-1443

Sat Feb 28, 9AM-3PM
The 10th Annual Stewardship Forum
Event details:
Join us at the 2009 Stewardship Forum and learn how to engage youth, faith groups and new Canadians in your environmental projects. Enhance your ability to provide interpretive hikes, create reptile habitat and start your own monitoring projects. View displays and network over
Lunch. Learn how to:
• Lead an interpretive hike
• Create habitat for native reptiles
• Monitor pollinating insects
• Engage others in stewardship, including youth, faith and ethno-racial groups and more...
Black Creek Pioneer Village, 1000 Murray Ross Parkway, Downsview, Toronto ON
Register for workshops at the Forum. Registration: 416-392-LEAF or email greentoronto@toronto.ca.

This forum is a good place to get an introduction to the volunteer stewardship events, organizations and sites in the GTA in 2009. As I've said before, I'm an eager fan of volunteer stewardship in the GTA.

Gibraltar Point dunes planting event site, with City of Toronto Parks & Rec. Natural Environment's Parkland Naturalization and Evergreen.

Sat Feb 28, 2 - 6PM
Seedy Saturday 2009
Various locations including Artscape Wychwood Barns (Barn #2), 601 Christie St, Toronto, ON. Seed exchange, Heirloom seeds for sale, gardening workshops, and kids and many other locations. Seed exchange and other activities. Booths include NANPS and Seeds of Diversity.

Sat Feb. 28, 10AM
Winter Birds - Ashbridges' Bay
Meet at the southwest corner of Lake Shore Blvd. E. and Coxwell Avenue. Bring binoculars. Morning only. A Toronto Field Naturalists Walks event.

Sun March 1, 10:30am - 1PM
Holistic Ecosystem. High Park Volunteer Stewardship Program Winter Lecture Series Part 3. The Howard Park Tennis Club 430 Parkside Drive Toronto. See High Park Volunteer Stewardship Program (VSP) or contact vsp@highpark.org.

Three experts talk about restoring damaged natural wildlife habitats in the urban environment, biodiversity and the importance of green corridors to support wildlife biodiversity:

• Steve Smith, consulting forester and owner of Urban Forest Associates (UFA): Restoration of damaged natural habitats for wildlife. Since 1993, UFA has provided expertise in forest management, restoration of damaged natural habitats from various causes, reforestation, plant identification, invasive species control, project planning and management. Note: check out Steve's Sustaining Healthy Ravine Forests presentation from the last Ontario Urban Forest Council AGM. It was my favourite presentation from last year, and the best conference too!
• Dan Stuckey, Seneca College, Prof. Environmental Landscape Management: Biodiversity.
• Amber Cowie, Ontario Nature Greenway Conservation Coordinator: The importance of natural corridors and challenges. Her current work includes protection of habitat for species at risk, the preservation of natural cores and corridors and the strengthening of rural ways of life.

Sun March 1, 2:30PM
Your Home and Native Garden: Creating beautiful natural spaces where we live, work and play. Speaker: Paul O'Hara, Proprietor, Blue Oak Native Landscapes. Illustrated lecture. Lectures are given at Emmanuel College, 75 Queen's Park Crescent East, Toronto. A Toronto Field Naturalists lecture. For more information call the TFN office at (416) 593-2656

Sun March 1
The Nature Conservancy of Canada’s (NCC) Conservation Volunteers program volunteer events and field trips schedule for 2009 goes online today. Register early! The program matches volunteers of all skill levels with critical conservation projects. If you or your family and friends are looking for a unique way to contribute to wildlife and wild places while learning new skills, spend a day or a short volunteer vacation with us.
NCC Conservation Volunteers program: young Eastern Hog-nosed snake in Mary Gartshore's hands. Ken Stead Property, Walsingham.

The NCC owns and manages land in some of Canada's most spectacular natural areas. Volunteering is a chance to enjoy incredible scenery, observe rare species, learn hands-on skills and work with dedicated and knowledgeable companions.

NCC Conservation Volunteers program: Seed collecting Lechia intermedia & other prairie species. Ken Stead Property, post-agr. black oak savannah restoration, Walsingham ON

Born in 1992? Check out the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources' Ontario Stewardship Ranger program. Starting in March of each year team locations are posted. Please check back often for an Ontario Stewardship Ranger Team located near you. The application deadline for 2009 will vary from one team location to another, but is generally between late April and early June. In order to qualify to be a Ranger in 2009 you must be born in 1992, enrolled in school, a resident of Ontario, and in good physical condition.

Sun March 8, 10:30AM - Noon
Winter Tree Identification - Toronto Urban Forestry. Meet at the benches just south of Grenadier Restaurant. A High Park Walking Tours event.

I will never buy anything from people who sell exotic horticultural plants again.

I honestly do not know why some plants are even legal to sell and profit from.

Got this in a newsletter today. The bolding's my own.

Longer Marketing Time Increases the Risk of Naturalization by Horticultural Plants - By Stephanie Yao, Agricultural Research Service, USDA. February 24, 2009

"...Unlike previous studies on the invasiveness of horticultural plants, the research team found that the marketing period--the number of years a plant was sold--has profound influence on naturalization and invasion. Seventy percent of plants sold in Florida for 30 years or longer naturalized, according to Pemberton, indicating that length of time sold is the most important factor contributing to naturalization. Non-native plants will continue to naturalize and invade as long as they are sold ..." read more

Details of this study were recently published in the scientific journal Ecology. ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

*

Recently I copied some plant names from the Invasive Exotic Species Ranking for Southern Ontario and pasted them into the search field of a popular local nursery's on-line catalogue.

Almost every invasive species I looked-up was for sale.

Many are even in multiple cultivars, some up to 8 or even 14, including a few variegated leaf forms. That's a double why to me.

The species include:

• Norway maple Acer platanoides
• Tree of heaven Ailanthus altissima
• Oriental bittersweet Celastrus orbiculatus
• Japanese knotweed Polygonum cuspidatum *
  
• Common Periwinkle Vinca Minor
• White mulberry Morus alba L.
• Tatarian honeysuckle Lonicera tatarica L.
• Glossy buckthorn Rhamnus frangula
• Japanese honeysuckle Lonicera japonica
• Amur honeysuckle Lonicera maackii
• Multiflora rose Rosa multiflora
• European birch Betula pendula
• Winged Euonymus Euonymus alatus
• Autumn olive Elaeagnus umbellate
• Flowering rush Butomus umbellatus
• European frog-bit Hydrocharis morsus-ranae
• Rough manna grass Glyceria maxima
• Black alder Alnus glutinosa
• Phragmites / common reed Phragmites australis

I stopped there.

* some one near and dear actually bought one one of the Japanese Knotweeds. "Isn't it pretty? I've never even HEARD of it before!" and then she asked me to plant it for her. "I don't think that would be a good idea," i said and suggested she go in and look up that species on-line. She came back out an hour later and said "WHY would they even this sell this to me?!" "Because they know you will buy it. And they know most people have been persuaded to believe that their own connection with the natural world is so severed that they should "always ask for" and defer to professional advice, and we assume that -- because they bought expensive "certified" memberships to hort associations, or had training in well-known programs in our schools -- we can trust them not to do something this stupid.

Why are these plants even legal to sell and profit from here, when we demand that our taxes, government and non-profit resources spend time and money trying to control the exact same species?

We spend money and time on invasives: control, eradication, monitoring, impacts, public education, and on restoring and acquiring conservation lands that we must perpetually defend. But we won't out law one of their largest known sources.

I'm sick of the traditional hort and gardening industry. I haven' t been able to rationalize it for a long time, but now I can't even find reasons to tolerate it (this blog has links to a raft of alternatives, for consumers and the people who are employed by the hort industry too). I'm sick of the racket: grow easy invasive hort plants -> hype invasive plants with awards and press releases and big garden shows: charge people to read or see this hype-> sell invasive plant to client for money -> sell client unnecessary fertilizer for plant -> fertilizer mysteriously destroys soil and client must come back for more fertilizer -> watch plant grow... and spread, and cause misery -> customer must come back for weed removal advice, tools, herbicide, possibly labour, and buy more "new" award winning plants (maybe some patented plant that doesn't spread, or even seed anymore, which is about as useful as sculpture to local insects) to fill the new hole in their yard. I know that a lot of people, be as a result of education or legislation, are taking out some of the steps like salt-based fertilizers and cosmetic pesticides, or peat moss for that matter, but the rest of the cycle still remains.

And BTW I’m not trying to single-out a specific nursery. I'm sure it's the same at almost all conventional nurseries and garden centres. In fact, that particular nursery actually sells some ethically propagated native plants. Not that I will buy from them anymore, or from any nursery who will not stop selling invasives. Not a pot, a shovel, a trellis, a hose, a book, a rake, pruning tools... anything.

How can I support any business that perpetuates the spread of well-known invasive plants? Why would I spend money supporting invasive plant culture when invasives steal my natural heritage, a lot of my time, break my back and lay waste to living things and places I love?

Happy holly days!

Winter just officially arrived two days ago, with 30+cms of recent snow and -23C windchills, so I know it takes a little faith and optimism to celebrate that our patch of the planet really has begun returning toward the sun. But, yes, it's true: field season 2009 has just been conceived!

And here in Toronto, today, December 23rd, is the first day we'll see an extra minute of sunlight:Solstice season in the city always reminds me of the essay Lost Rites - Searching for an authentic way to worship nature where Maria T. Stadtmueller looks for, and finds, her own honest way to celebrate winter solstice in New York City.

Here are some excerpts:

"Like a lot of people seeking some spiritual connection to the natural world, I read up on Native American spirituality, but it felt like a cultural trespassing to demand a seat for my white ass in the sweat lodge. What I am, I realized, is spiritually hungry and European.

[I've also] attended pagan rites... and the scenario is inevitably the same, with much ado about robes, men who like to wear Maybelline, and no detectable spiritual substance. ...I can't keep a straight face at pagan pageants.

Surely, I thought, I'm not the only one here with years of environmental activism under her belt. Surely I'm not the only one who, in working to protect them, has made herself learn more than she ever intended to know about monarch butterflies, coral reefs, or old-growth root systems. Then why aren't we celebrating what we know about the natural world? Why instead are we beseeching the sun to return in the spring when we all learned in fourth grade why it will?

There was one solstice gathering a few years ago that felt truly celebratory. There was no ceremony, no costumes, just ten shivering strangers bundled up for a Central Park tour titled "Winter Solstice in New York: Who Survives?"

As we headed into the park that Saturday morning, our two female park rangers occasionally stopped us to describe how particular birds or bushes withstand a Northeast winter. These women knew their turf: They pointed out lofty holes in oak trees where a half-hidden raccoon would be sleeping off a rough night in Upper West Side alleys; they knew where to spot a hawk when all we had noticed was the scattering sparrows. We stopped in front of a glossy green holly tree, a real extrovert against December's taupe and gray. Holly leaves survive, one guide explained, because the tree stores water not in the leaf cells, but in interstices between cells; there the water can freeze and expand, and the cells remain intact. A thrill bubbled up through my half-frozen marrow at the genius and beauty of this little system. Oh, you are wise, I thought. You are glorious! This tree, and these women who knew it, and the light that clicked on in our faces when we knew it too--this was a catechism of sorts, nature's Magnificent in which science could sing its stanza."

Stadtmueller is talking about a holly like the one pictured above, perhaps a European or hopefully a American Holly ilex opaca, whose native range includes New York, but doesn't reach this far north.

Our native holly is the Common Winterberry Ilex verticillata (below).

Unlike the typical Christmas season hollies most of us are familiar with, Winterberry is deciduous, losing its leaves in the autumn, which is fine because those bright red berries are their charm. Winterberry is a “very common” native in our Ecodistrict (7E-4), and "regionally rare" (L3) in the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority area. Come Novemeber it's easy to spot growing in wet areas. How wet? In this pic, where it was one among many along roadside ditches NW of Carden Plain, you'll notice it's growing between a wet ditch and a swamp. Although I haven't tried it yet, apparently it's also an adaptable garden plant too.

Tip: If you do decide to bring Winterberry to your garden, remember, like all holly trees and shrubs, it's dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate plants. And, as always, don't settle for cultivars or distantly sourced plants. Why? One example is that even among plants of the same species, in the same garden, those sourced from different local eco-types may bloom or fruit at different times, but our local animals, pollinators or migrating birds depend on our plants, the plants they co-evolved with, to flower and fruit at their unique specific time. Besides, you don't have to settle: our area has some excellent native plant nurseries (see the list of "native plant nurseries & sources" in the links at the right) who can help you source ethically propagated local Winterberry.

Again, happy holly days, merry Solstice, and all the best in garden and field season 2009!

The Tangled Garden

The Tangled Garden - J.E.H. MacDonald

In autumn, a lot of gardens around the city remind me of this painting. It is especially evoked for me when I see the humongous sunflowers (still standing!) at the Children’s /Veggie Garden at the Brick Works. (The squirrels in my neighbourhood would've feasted on those weeks ago!)

Makes sense that I see these scenes around the GTA since the painting is from a garden in Thornhill: 121 Centre Street Vaughn Ontario to be exact. MacDonald, a member of the Group of Seven, owned the property and painted this garden out back of it in 1916. The property is now protected by the Ontario Heritage Act. I’ve read about plans hoping to restore the garden, but I can’t find updates about that. Guess I should just drop in one day.

Events this week!

• Oct 16: Ontario Urban Forest Council's workshop and AGM at the Toronto Botanical Gardens
• Sat Oct 18, 12-4PM - NANPS AGM and Native Plant Sale. This year’s theme is “The Role of Plants in Water Conservation.” Toronto Botanical Gardens
• Sun Oct 19, 11-1PM - Wildlfower Seed Collecting and stewardship, Evergreen Brick Works
• Sun Oct 19, 10:30 - Seed collecting, fence repair and trail work with the High Park Volunteer Stewardship Program. Meet at the Grenadier Café and Teahouse.

Invasive Plants: Events and Updates

The Ontario Invasive Plant Council's 2008 Annual General Meeting is Wednesday November 5th in Barrie.

The OIPC doesn't have its own website, but they communicate through this page at Stewardship Network of Ontario. The rest of their invasive plant public education is hubbed at OFAH’s Invading Species Awareness Program. The OIPC and OFAH are a lot of the same folks and they’ve really stepped up and taken the reigns on developing invasive plant management strategies, policy and public education in Ontario. I’m grateful.

The OIPC meeting comes on the heels of the Biology and Biological Control of Established Invasive Plants in Canada Conference in Ottawa this upcoming Saturday October 18. So I expect information will trickle down from there too.

Ecosystems are not only more complex than we think, but more complex than we can think. - Frank Egler

While the results of the weevils and beetles introduced to control Purple Loosestrife are a poster child for biological control agents (which BTW means not having to use chemical control in wetlands), part of the process is of course continuing to learn from the unintended impacts of releasing these controls. For one recent example, check out Bug Girl’s recent post about “Biocontrol and unanticipated consequences”.

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. - John Muir

Invasives Species of the Toronto Area

Where they are and how to deal with them
Tues Nov 25 2008, 7:30 PM
Presented by Paul Heydon of Grow Wild Nurseries, and Gavin Miller Head botanist for the TRCA
Part of the NANPS Winter Speaker Series

It was as a result of being a gardener that I started paying attention to invasives and natives, and observing the differences between them. It was really depressing for a long time. Once you start seeing them, you can’t stop. -Molly Boyes

The word about invasive plants is gradually getting out. Last month, CTV reported how Calgary is facing a “biological emergency” as a result of exotic plant invasion.

Also, this past summer, the CBC reported on Dog-Strangling Vine around Ottawa and nearby areas in Quebec.

However, the same stories also reported that Dog-strangling Vine “alters soil pH.”

Yikes! No it doesn't. Well, not as far anyone knows.

In response to an email from Dave Barr, Carleton University DSV researcher Naomi Cappuccino (who was interviewed for the story) replied “I haven't a clue where they got that. In fact, I tried to set them straight during the interview for TV, but that got cut. Work from Toni DiTommaso's lab at Cornell has shown that DSV has an effect on fungal communities in the soil, but as far as I know, nobody has looked at pH.”

Thank you Dave! :)

The only people I can think of who are doing any research on DSV + soil pH are Antonio Ditommaso and Lindsey Milbrath. Both are weed prof's with the Weed Ecology and Managment Lab at Cornell and neck deep in DSV research. But, they're NOT looking at whether DSV alters pH, but rather, if there are co-relations between DSV growth and populations and existing soil pH (eg click here and here too.)

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on the land is quite invisible to laymen. - Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

My two fave invasive plants email lists are the Midwest Invasive Plant Network's listserve, and the Plant Conservation Alliance’s Alien Plant Working Group / APWG listserve. (I like the PCA's Restoration Working Group’s listserve too).

Yes, they’re both out the US, but they include Southern Ontario, and we share a lot of the same plants and issues. And, in a lot of ways they’re ahead of us too (organizing, lobbying, funding, experience, response, educational events and the number of people who are actively involved) and that makes these listserves a good place to learn.

Weeds 101 Workshop folks!

This one's for the good folks who came out to Evergreen's "Weeds 101 Workshop" at the Brick Works today.

• the main invasive plant management strategy recommended in the workshop was: "Recognize. Remove. Dispose. Remediate. Replant. Return." Read more about it here
• most of the invasive plant resources mentioned in the workshop are posted here
• Dog-Strangling Vine (DSV) merits its own post
• we also touched on High Park's experience with DSV, including glyphosate / Round-Up, as well as glyhposate laws in Toronto
  
• and how Garlic Mustard is changing our forests by reducing the mychorrizal fungi in soil.
  
• also, as stewardship co-ordinators Claire from Evergreen and Sharon Lovett from High Park mentioned, a great way to learn about invasive plants is by joining a local stewardship group in Toronto
• if you want to stay-in-the-loop about future workshops and events not only at Evergreen Brick Works but throughout our area, please check out the links under "Events, Workshops, Field Trips, Volunteering " in the right side bar
  
• In that same long list of links on the right, you can also find some good advice on how to plan a native or naturalized garden under "Native plant gardening & naturalization: how to's & plant recommendations" as well as where to buy ethically propagated under "Native plant nurseries & sources" too.

I can't thank you enough for making it out today, for caring, and for your encouragement too -- it all makes Dog-Strangling Vine and Garlic Mustard feel a little less overwhelming.

"It is not for you to complete the task, but you must begin."

Thank you again and please post any questions, info or links to pics from this afternoon in the "comments" below.

Rare Plants of the Endangered High Park Black Oak Savannah: A Volunteer Stewardship Program Guidebook

Rare Plants of the Endangered High Park Black Oak Savannah: A Volunteer Stewardship Program Guidebook. High Park Community Advisory Council (HPCAC) and HPCAC Volunteer Stewardship Program. Toronto, Ontario: High Park Initiatives, 2008. 64pp. $15.

I’m trying to write a book review, but what I keep coming up with is a love letter.

This blog has tried to suss-out a few resources about High Park before, but this new book is the introduction I’ve really been looking for all along.

It’s not just an interesting and easy-to-use interpretive field guide (lots of gorgeous glossy black oak savannah and tall grass prairie plant ID pictures and facts about their habitats, as well as natural history backgrounders), it’s also an inspiring and informative stewardship story too! A story about who and what it took, and still takes, to steward this remnant of globally endangered habitat, including stewardship volunteer teams, a unique public advisory committee, community consultation, an on-site native plants nursery, adopt-a-plot native plant gardens, and local native plant sales which increase the habitat in private yards well beyond park boundaries. All of this in a high-use urban park no less (e.g. sports, cultural events and an increasingly vocal dogs-off-leash community with a self-admitted non-compliance as high as 39% in some on-leash areas: a difficult challenge for any area attempting to conserve a globally endangered landscape, its plants, wildlife and their fragile habitats, such as ground nests). There are also examples and encouraging lesson anyone can apply to restoring and stewarding their natural areas too.

Being a fan of our local environmental stewardship public education resources in and of themselves, I’m thrilled to say that this tight jewel of a book has set a new bar for me when it comes to natural area and stewardship field guides in general.

The format is fresh and inclusive. “We wanted it to be different from many guidebooks,” says High Park Volunteer Stewardship Program Co-Chair Sharon Lovett, “we included volunteer stewards and city restoration staff as part of the habitat. And we wanted to encourage other people to undertake restoration projects of their own as well as learn to appreciate the park’s specific black oak savannah.”

Who might want to buy this book? Local native plant lovers, stewards, citizens of the area, folks creating their own environmental stewardship and natural area public outreach and education pieces, and, of course, anyone visiting High Park. Whether you're new to the park or a long-time fan, this book greets folks where they’re at, and it has enough references and resources to carry you through for a long time after that too.

For more reviews and how to buy this book, look here. Also check the Toronto Botanical Garden's bookstore, High Park events and booths at similar events in the city (I got mine at an NANPS plant sale and I've come across it at the Evergreen Brick Works Saturday Farmer's Market too.)You you can also contact vsp@highpark.org to order a copy. $15 plus $3.00 shipping. Cheque payable to High Park Initiatives. 95 Lavinia Avenue, P.O. Box 108, Toronto, ON, M6S 3H9. All proceeds support stewardship and educational projects in HighPark.

Two new pollinator guides for Toronto gardeners and field naturalists

A Guide to Toronto's Pollinators by Laurence Packer, York University, and Toronto Plant Guide for Attracting Pollinators by Victoria MacPhail.

Each are free online, or you can order them in hard copy for $5 each.

PS- Thanks to the Toronto Botanical Garden Library blog for the heads up.

LEAF - Tree Tenders Workshop: May 13, 20 and 24th

This 11 hour training program is designed for individuals who want to gain tree-related knowledge and skills. If you have had some experience at tree planting or gardening, but want more in-depth training, this series is for you! Only $35.00 plus GST for all three sessions. Details on the program and to register.

This was just announced today. If you're into it, SIGN UP NOW because it fills super quick. I took it, and Todd Irvine taught most of it and the manual was amazing too!

Native Plant Sales

photo: High Park VSP

High Park's Native Plant Sale
Sunday May 4, 10:30 am -12:30
Location: High Park Greenhouses
Also: Book Launch "Rare Plants of the Endangered Black Oak Savannah" a High Park Volunteer Stewardship Program guidebook to this special environment in High Park: 2:30 pm at Howard Park Tennis Club, 430 Parkside Drive.

NANPS Native Plant Sale
Sat May 10, 10am - 3pm
Markham Civic Centre
Free Admission & parking
Speakers and seminars:
11 am - Helping Trees Thrive the Natural Way - Todd Irvine from LEAF
Noon - Alternatives to Lawns - TRCA
1 pm - Why Garden with Native Plants - Paul Heydon from Grow Wild! Nursery

Evergreen Brick Works Native Plant Sale and Gardening Fair
Sat June 7, 8am – 3pm
Several native plant nurseries selling plants and seeds; native plant gardening Q&A table and activities, including a native wildflower planting from 10 am–noon.

*

My advice for all 3? Get there early! The High Park & NANPS sales are already seriously buzzing (and addictive) rites-of-spring for more than a few folks. The Evergreen Brick Works plant fair is new, but based on the success of the native plant nursery pilot-project there last year, I'm sure it'll be a hit. These sales are also fundraisers and seamlessly accomplish a lot of outreach and public education too. And if you can't make it out to these sales, no worries: checking out native plant nurseries is always a great excuse for a day-trip too! For native plant nursery locations and more ways to buy (& support) local ethical native plants look under “native plant nurseries & sources” in the links list on the right.

humble beginnings

jewel weed

"My first adult experiment in seed starting involved an innocent-looking packet of "Heavenly Blue" morning glories. ...the seeds started to sprout. ...I decided that somehow ...I had gotten it all wrong, and the little dummies were growing upside down. ...And so I spent the afternoon inverting my morning glories." - Lorraine Johnson


becoming a lady bug

Me? A few years ago in a late spring woodland, I got really into some little dark maroon flowers on a twining vine. But, I couldn't find the plant in any of my field guides. Thinking "Wow....maybe it's really rare!" I returned a couple of months later to very ethically (the take less than 10% rule) collect a few seeds, and I sowed them in my back yard. A year or two later I found out what Dog-Strangling Vine was. As you know, that sh*t is EVERYWHERE: I still can't explain how hadn't I noticed it before... or why I didn't even get those seeds to germinate!


monarch larva on common milkweed

"When I was in graduate school ...I took a course in woody landscape plants. ...At the same time I was taking a course about plant-insect interactions. These were courses that explained why most insect herbivores can only eat plants with which they share an evolutionary history. All of the information I needed to realize that covering the land with alien plant species might not be such a good idea had been neatly and simultaneously placed in my lap during those months in graduate school, but it was 20 years before I made the connection: our native insects will not be able to survive on alien plant species [and that our native birds need those native insects for food.] "- Douglas W. Tallamy - Chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, and author of Bringing Nature Home - How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens.

ELC Training

ELC training will be at Fleming College (near Peterborough) from June 23 to June 27, 2008. To request the 2008 brochure or to register (only 20 spots), email Suzanne Gitto at sgitto@gartnerlee.com. Last year’s brochure is online. The 5 day course costs over $2000.

Is it worth it? Up to you: maybe it's essential to your job, or a skill you want to offer as a consultant. If you’re not sure if this course is for you, borrow or buy the field guide, and then think about it.

Background:

ELC stands for "Ecological Land Classification." The ELC's for southern Ontario (the system and its field guide) were developed in the 90's through the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources

“...in response to a growing demand for a standardized method of classifying the range of habitats found across southern Ontario …for ecologists, planners, biologists, geographers, foresters, land managers or land owners who assess and manage natural resources. ...[ELC's] provides a tool to identify, describe, name, map, and monitor landscape patterns and communities in a consistent manner." (OMNR)

ELC's include vegetation communities and environmental characteristics (e.g. topography and soil types). Useful stuff for environmental assessments, conservation and eco-restoration. ELC's are standard now, and commonly taught (or at least introduced) in relevant post-secondary programs in Ontario. Otherwise, to get the training you can take the ELC course. The course takes place over 5 days and the cost includes the field guide, instruction, meals and accommodation.

I don't know how often the training occurs (I remember only one ELC training session last year and so far I’ve only heard of one this year too.)

A friend of mine -- a U of T Botany grad -- took the training last fall. Out of 20 participants, 18 had their costs covered by their employers (e.g. conservation authorities, municipalities) and most of them were on paid leave to be there too: talk to your employer about covering or subsidizing your costs! My friend however had just graduated, was between jobs and had to pay the whole shot herself (ouch! -- made me wish there were subsidies). Her verdict? She learned a lot and she thinks it was and will be worth it for her. (She also said that they spent most of their time studying soils, including how soils can help you interpret previous plant communities on a site. Cool).

Me? Much as I truly would love to go to sleep-away ELC field camp (last year they stayed in cabins north of Kingston), instead, I'm sticking with the field guide. I bought it a couple of springs ago for $30. I like it. :) It shows me plant communities and land+vegetation associations I would never figure out on my own. Although it is for southern Ontario, it's been useful for me around North Bay & Temagami (alongside the Central, North Eastern and North Western Ontario Forest Type Descriptions too), and even on the other side of the Ottawa river. Before I bought it, I was afraid it might be too technical, but it's well written, it explains itself, and it's well designed as a reference book too.

Community Stewardship 2008!

Planting tallgrass prairie demo beds at the Brick Works. Photo by Emma Rooney

Summer Stewardship season 2008. Ahhhh... even my trowel is smiling. All I can say is, if you haven't done it, do it! It's a blast and a great way to learn about native plants, naturalization, restoration and local ecology.

The best way to get in on it? Come out to the City of Toronto's Community Stewardship program's Orientation night Wednesday April 30th 2008, 7:PM at Riverdale Farm.

Lots of info, resources and introductions to stewardship sites across all 6 watersheds in the GTA (many stewardship groups are partnered with this program). To register for Orientation night, or if you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to call Cheryl Post at 416-392-LEAF or email her at greentoronto@toronto.ca.

If you're reading this after April 30^th 2008, or if you can't make it to orientation, no problem! Just give Cheryl a call and she’ll hook-you-up with sites in your area.

More excellent community stewardship opportunities:

• Evergreen's Greater Toronto Stewardship program, with lots of sites across the GTA
• High Park's Volunteer Stewardship Program
• find more stewardship sites, groups and events through the City of Toronto’s “green groups” site

Want to know about what community stewardship looks like? Check out the Riverdale Farm Ponds and Beechwood Wetlands stewardship blogs.

If you have a stewardship website or blog you would like to share please leave a comment!

With the plants come the critters.

Beavers, opossums, otters, deer, foxes, coyotes, rabbits, skunks, minks, porcupines, ground hogs, bats, turtles, snakes, frogs, fireflies, owls, golden eagles, white pelicans and 300+ more bird species … yup, all here in the city of Toronto, just trying to stay alive and keep a home, like you and me.

Yesterday we saw our first baby raccoons this season. It’ll be awhile yet before we come across displaced baby birds. In between, we notice that once the daffodils come up, the baby squirrels start to fall down (sadly, often off of high roofs and onto pavement = bleeding-out-the-nose irrecoverable head injuries; while others just have mild hypothermia and dehydration and can be warmed, hydrated, stabilized and re-situated the same day).

What should you do when you come across distressed wildlife in your yard?

“First do no harm”...but how do you even know which interventions are a good or a bad idea? (I wish that gardening, stewardship and hort / botanical societies would give practical workshops on this. Wildlife is what you get when you're growing their food and shelter after all). It's way less stressful for you and the animal if you have a bit of a plan ahead of time (like how, ideally, you take 1st aid or CPR course before you need them), so check out the Toronto Wildlife Centre, Toronto Humane Society Wildlife Rehab, and for birds, FLAP. If you get up into cottage country, you'll be interested in the Muskoka Wildlife Centre and A Wing and a Prayer.

***

Want to attract and nurture wildlife in your backyard? See the Canadian Wildlife Federation's Attracting Wildlife page. You'll also be interested in Douglas Tallamy's Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens. Tallamy is the Chair of the University of Delaware's Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology = he knows his stuff, and better yet, he writes in accessible plain language. I think this one's bound to be essential reading for native plant gardeners (and anyone interested in back yard ecology, including native pollinators, but that’ll have to be another post.) BTW: the cost of this book varies wildly, I've started using all bookstores.com to find best the price.

Also, if you're in Ontario and you think you have serious wildlife habitat you want to identify and protect, see the OMNR's Significant Wildlife Habitat - Technical Guide -- interesting reading for field naturalists too.

Don Mouth Naturalization and Port Lands Flood Protection Project

Waterfront Toronto and the TRCA presented the latest design at a well attended public meeting and discussion last Saturday morning.

Quick notes:

Time line reality check: naturalizing the bottom of the Don has already been a 17 year long project for some, and implementation is currently forecast at 2010->2035.

If it happens at all.

While all three levels of gov't have already committed $65 million to the project, the land hasn't been purchased yet, and there are competing development pressures for the same space. So, next steps (alongside provincial and federal environmental assessments) include drawing up a municipal "precinct plan" that will zone the area in favour of the naturalization project. So then, in effect, it will be the city, and not the Ontario Municipal Board, who will decide whether the land will go to the naturalization project or to competing interests.

Find more information about the meeting and the project at the TRCA's "Don Mouth Naturalization - What's New" page. You'll see where you can submit comments until April 14th (after which time you could still stencil "4WS yes!" along the bottom of the Gardiner at the Don Roadway?)

I've only been following these meetings for less than 2 years, and already, the plans seem to both change often or not progess at all. On Saturday morning, I realized that letting myself care about this project is like letting myself become a vessel of an idea. A very important, big and beautiful idea (like the architecture at Union Station or the Bloor Viaduct makes me see the long conversations and gifts from another generation). An idea that when or if it really happens, would be so nourishing -- knowing that humans still have the ability to sustain belief, long haul vision and the will to do the right thing -- but it would be even better if it would happen while the people who've stewarded this far are still alive.

"why Ontario's fragile ecosystems are disappearing"

The cover story of the current issue of Ontario Nature magazine is a collection of articles profiling a few of the endangered ecosystems in southern and central Ontario. They've published all these articles on their site including Carolinian Zone and A Garden Of Rarities (the Ojibway Prairie Complex) by Lorraine Johnson, and Alvars and Wetlands by Andrea Smit.

Also, consider this from the Ruthven Park nature blog

Although only approximately 1% of Canada falls within the Carolinian Life Zone, more species of plants and animals are found here than anywhere else in Canada. Over 2200 species of plants are found within the Carolinian zone in Canada.

vernal equinox

"Spring this year couldn't come too soon—and it didn't. It took its time-melting at its own pace, over running ice—blocked sewer drains, swelling the Humber River and the Don River stretching to the lake. The sound of the city was of trickling water. Have you ever smelled this city at the beginning of spring? Dead winter circling still, it smells of eagerness and embarrassment and, most of all, longing."– Dionne Brand.

winter was hard.

still, not without its gracesor refuge.

This winter I spent an unwholesome amount of time trying to understand / cope with invasives, and my own weariness and niaveté. Reminds me of a few quotes:

"One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on the land is quite invisible to laymen." - Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

"We still need conservationists who will attempt the impossible, achieving it because they aren't aware of how impossible it is." - David Brower

"Education is less about the acquisition of knowledge than the loss of illusion." - Joseph Campbell

"Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for." Clarence Darrow

“Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time.” -Robert H. Schuller

"In some realms of nature, shadows and darkness are the places of greatest growth. - Henry Jackson Van Dyke

In the midst of winter
I finally learned
there was in me
an invincible summer.
-Albert Camus

Dog-Strangling Vine

"We stand to lose our natural ecosystem, all our native plants, everywhere in the Great Lakes Basin and southern Ontario.” - Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources Ecologist Waysel Bakowsky, when asked about the threat of DSV.

Dog-Strangling Vine is a highly invasive perennial vine that dominates and destroys ecosystems.If you see this plant on your property, or your local park or community garden, the alley where you walk your dog, the parking lot at work, the playground at your kid's day care, your mother-in-laws' garden, or your neighbour's yard (with their permission of course) please remove it. ...before it looks like this:or worse, this:

photo by Stephen J. Darbyshire

"DSV" is some times understood to be two similar species (Pale Swallow-wort Cynanchum rossicum or Vincetoxicum rossicum which prefers sun, and Black Swallow-wort Cynanchum louiseae or Vincetoxicum nigrum) but, for most practical purposes it's generally referred to, and treated as, simply DSV.

DSV is invading, dominating and destroying natural areas, habitats and ecosystem functions in and near our area: oak savannah, forests, woodlands, tallgrass prairies, meadows, even alvars. DSV directly threatens to displace all of our native plants, in all of our natural areas, except wetlands (although it does grow along riparian river and stream edges). It spreads by prolific wind-dispersed seeds similar to our native milkweeds. Seeds are poly-embryonic (one seed can produce several viable embryos / plants). Plants can self-pollinate in a single day. Research has found decline in the populations and diversity of insects in old fields dominated by DSV. DSV displaces native Milkweed species, impacting pollinators who depend on them. Also, in experiments, when given the choice of both DSV and Milkweed, Monarch butterflies have been observed laying up to 1/4 of their eggs on DSV, resulting in death of those larvae. DSV is salt-tolerant and can handle a range of substrates with variable pH's from limestone to granite, and is found in gravel, clay and sandy soils. Currently there are no biological controls to keep DSV in check.

REMOVE:

How? Dig out the entire root of the plant (pulling is ineffective: roots will persist and form several plants). Its easier if you use the right tools (weed rockers don't get out all the brittle roots, and planting trowels are often dull and clumsy when used as weeding tools). In hard compacted soils, try using a sharper-edged trowel or spade. Also a "Weed Wrench" is recommended (Mary Gartshore, Pterophylla Nurseries). If you do dig out the roots (good for you!), avoid any unnecessary soil disturbance (it day lights existing seed bank in the soil and also provides a place for new invasive seeds to enter) and backfill the hole to prevent further invasion. At this point you can also either replant with the area with desired species (of course I'm recommending natives) and/or cover the area with mulch.

In infestations too large to dig out, control further spreading by cutting the plants. This will help to prevent seed pods from maturing. You will likely have to cut at least twice during the season (every year for the 1st few years), as plants continue to produce seeds from May to November. (Note: Fletcher Wildlife Garden has had some success with a single cut per year when timed around June 26.) Common tools used for cutting: garden shears (but they can be hard on the back), weed whippers and mowers. However, Fletcher Wildlife Garden has found scythes to be easier, efficient (requiring less volunteers and time) and more manouverable when trying to cut around desired plant species among the DSV. Scythes are available at Lee Valley for $112.

Larger patches can also be controlled by covering the area with tarps or landscape barrier fabrics (secured by landscape fabric stakes / pegs or coat hangers) or a thick layer of newspaper for several months, followed by the removing remaining persisting plants. Another control option is Glyphosate (aka Round-Up). Glyphosate is not a one-shot deal: Cara Webster (City of Toronto Urban Forestry) recommends 2 glyphosate applications each year for the 1st 2 years. Please see this earlier post for more information about glyphosate and DSV.

DISPOSE:

After removing or cutting DSV, DO NOT dispose of roots or seeds in your garden composter, or in a open air pile. Reproductive parts of DSV and other weeds can go into regular city yard waste collection.

REPLANT:

Replant weeded area with local native plants (e.g. for no cost: use nearby in-season seeds such as common milkweed, cup plant, grey-headed coneflower) or transplant other ethically acquired native plants (the $5 for SER-O's 2007-2008 Native Plant Resource Guide is money well spent!). Start with common native plants that are most likely to survive and become establish (one possible strategy might be to start with the more aggressive colonizing natives.) DSV appears to be more aggressive and capable of producing more seeds in sunny areas, however, it can also invade thicket (e.g sumacs, hawthorns and even dense cedars - Patricia Mohr) and shady areas (growing up to 9 feet, covering and out-competing shrubs and tree seedlings). However, it's most often it's along the forest edges and openings than dense shade areas. DSV "doesn't do well in areas of continuous dense forest" (Forester Jim Robb from Friends of the Rouge Watershed). For existing or new shade areas, plant with all successional forest layers (ground cover ->herbaceous layer -> shrub ->vine ->trees. For trees, Jim Robb recommends including fast growing early successional poplars and aspen as well as pine, alongside broad leaf hardwoods).

Along with planting in successional layers and using common locally adapted native plants appropriate for your site's conditions, two other defensive planting strategies are: planting in high density (more plants /sq M) and, planting in seasonal guilds -- the idea being continuous coverage through the warm seasons, for example: early spring = early woodland ephemerals like ginger, bloodroot, may apple; summer = woodland sunflower; autumn = zig-zag goldenrod and big-leaved aster.

Some plants seem to withstand DSV invasion better than others, possibly as a result of their allelopathic properties, including Zig-zag goldenrod (Todmorden Mills Wildflower Preserve, Sept. 2006 Newsletter), tall goldenrod (Steve Smith, Urban Forest Associates Inc.), some juglone spp. (Jim Robb), and also flowering raspberry (Fletcher Wildlife Garden), Colorado Blue Spruce (non-native but not invasive)(Gavin Miller). After planting, add a thick layer of mulch on bare ground around desired species.

To prevent DSV and other invasions: keep your healthy areas healthy (use mulch / leaf litter, do not disturb soils unnecessarily, grow plants adapted to your site conditions and region, do not use synthetic fertilizers or salts, catch and control any invasive early on), also plant and/or mulch nearby bare ground patches and disturbed areas and understorey vacancies, before they fill with invasives.

RETURN:

Continue to cut and control nearby DSV, monitor, weed, mulch and replant the area.

DSV Fact Sheets:

• Controlling Invasive Plants - City of Toronto
• Pale Swallow-wort - Fletcher Wildlife Garden
• Black Swallow-wort – Midwest Invasive Plant Network
• Black Swallow-wort and Pale Swallow-wort - Plant Conservation Alliance’s Alien Plant Working Group (PCA APWG)

Essential DSV reading:

• Gavin Miller, TRCA. Dog-strangling vine - Cynanchum rossicum (Kleopow) Borhidi: a review of distribution, ecology, and control of this invasive exotic plant. Fall 2007.
  
• Fletcher Wildlife Garden, Ottawa Ontario: Swallow-wort research (be sure to also read the “Sunday Volunteer” reports from 2006 and 2007)
• Di Tommaso, Antonio, Frances Lawlor and Stephen J. Darbyshire. 2005. The biology of invasive alien plants in Canada. 2. Cynanchum rossicum (Kleopow) Borhidi [= Vincetoxicum rossicum (Kleopow) Barbar.] and Cynanchum louiseae (L.) Kartesz & Gandhi [= Vincetoxivum nigrum (L.) Moench]. Canadian Journal of Plant Science, 85(1): 243-263.
• The Nature Conservancy’s Global Invasive Species Team (TNC Weeds) "Element Stewardship Abstracts" (or ESAs), with photographs: Pale swallow-wort, Black swallow-wort
• Cara Webster, City of Toronto Urban Forestry Restoration Challenges: The Ongoing Battle with Dog-strangling Vine Control at High Park

More info on control strategies and tools:

• T.C. Fuller & G. Douglas Barbe. “The Bradley method of Eliminating Exotic Plants from Natural Reserves", in CalEPPC News, Vol. 5, No.4, Fall 1997
• Thonas D. Brock. “The Bradley Method for Control of Invasive Plants”, The Newsletter of the Invasive Plants Association of Wisconsin, Issue 3 October 2002
  
• & thank you to folks at Todmorden Mills for directing me to those Bradley articles
• Weed Control Methods Handbook: Tools and Techniques for Use in Natural Areas Wildland Invasive Species Team – The Nature Conservancy. Includes manual methods and tools.

Get involved locally:

• volunteer on a stewardship site near you: GTA Stewardship and “Green Groups" listed by watershed
• take care of the lands (public or private) where you live
• take pictures of DSV and donate them to your local stewardship group, and use them yourself (on your own website, blog, newsletters, email lists, community garden agendas, meetings and workshops) alongside more information about DSV and what you can do about it.

Dog-Strangling Vine: Workshop

Come hear local invasive species experts talk about the impact of dog-strangling vine on natural areas in our community and learn about natural methods of eradicating it.

When: Friday Feb 29, 2008, 12:30->3:30
Where: Miller Lash House, U of T Scarbourough Campus, map
Who: Everyone Welcome, Free Admission
more info

Taxonomy of Urban Ecosystems

Ladies'-tresses orchids, the Port Lands, Toronto

There are some easily definable remnant native landscapes in Toronto:

• Fresh Water Dunes
• Beach Bars
• Oak Savannah and Tallgrass prairie
• Upland and lowland deciduous and mixed forests and swamps
• Ravines
• Bluffs
• Freshwater wetlands
• Watershed valleys corridors, riparian river and stream banks

But after that, I often see many of our urban natural areas described, rather non-descriptively, as “Cultural Meadow” / CUM1-1. This doesn’t exactly tease the character out of a place and into my heart. Worse, I feel that when we don't accurately describe a natural area we diminish or even dismiss it. That concerns me because, I feel that each of our identities are in part the products of where we live, including the natural areas we authentically inhabit; that nature is not something you find somewhere else – at the cottage, in the country, on the other side of an admission gate, or in the past, instead, for each of us, nature is exactly where we live our everydays, and 1/2 of us live in cities, and our lives are better when we have the words and skills to recognize and describe our/the nature we live in -- it helps us to see, understand, interpret, nurture, steward, love, discourse about and even defend (show some one else the ecological value of) our lands.

So of course I’m so stoked to have come across the E*vue site (Emergent Vegetation of The Urban Ecosystem) developed for Harvard's Graduate School of Design course Plants in Design. Here's my favourite part:

A Simple Taxonomy of Urban Ecosystems in the Northeast
by Peter Del Tredici

Managed Urban Habitats

Well Maintained Landscapes (weeds controlled):

Mowed grass (lawns and ball fields)
Mowed grass with scattered trees and shrubs (savannahs)
Public parks and open space
Planted woodlands with understory shrubs
Residential landscapes
Commercial and institutional landscapes

[somewhere around here I would add: managed but wild post-industrial eco-restoration and habitat enhancement sites e.g. Brick Works, Leslie Spit]

Minimally Maintained Landscapes (weeds abundant):

Trampled grass in public parks
Planting islands in paved areas
Neglected public parks and open space
Neglected residential and commercial landscapes

Derelict (Ruderal*) Urban Habitats

Abandoned or Neglected Open Space:

Vacant lots and waste dumps (primary succession)
Abandoned lawns and ball fields
Alleyways
Woodlands on abandoned land
Freshwater wetland and stream corridors
Riverbanks

Inner City Infrastructure:

Small-scale pavement openings (tree pits), edges, and cracks
Chain-link fence lines and stone walls
Roadway and highway banks, edges and median strips (salt applications)
Railroad tracks (gravel substrate and herbicide applications)
[I would also specify hydro corridors]

* Ruderal is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as "growing in rubbish, poor land, or waste places. From Latin rudera , ruins, rubbish, plural of rudus , broken stone."

Cool, yes? I mean, in a Leonard Cohen "Suzanne takes your hand, and she leads you to the river… and she shows you where to look, among the garbage and the flowers ...they are leaning out for love, they’ll lean that way forever" kind-of-way: how it illuminates unarticulated land we already all privately know into something beautiful (potentially or currently) worth directing our own and some one else's eyes toward.

It also brought this Alex Wilson quote to mind:

"My own sense is that the immediate work that lies ahead has to do with fixing landscape, repairing its ruptures, reconnecting its parts. Restoring landscape is not about 'preserving' lands -- "saving what's left," as it's often put. Restoration recognizes that once lands have been "disturbed" -- worked, lived on, meddled with, developed -- they require human intervention and care. We must build landscapes that heal, connect and empower, that make intelligible our relations with each other and with the natural world: places that welcome and enclose, whose breaks and edges are never without meaning."

BTW: The E*vue site also has some info about several of our typical urban weeds species, and, where possible, their ecological functions and preferences: this is not lost on a girl who can madly dig out DSV or pull Garlic Mustard by the garbage bag full, but still find the odd Tree-of-Heaven to defend in situations where I can’t realistically imagine any native tree being able to survive (e.g. a sq foot of compacted dust, gravel and slag on the margin of an asphalted post-industrial heavy-metals contaminated alleyway) and perform as many services (keeps dust and noise down; shades / cools asphalt & buildings; CO2->O2; stabilizes soil; decreases run-off) ...I've learned there are times to be pragmatic, and it helps that I believe that Tree-of-Heaven will inevitably be a co-dominant tree, not a dominant like perhaps Norway Maple.

headed for the endangered list?

The New Ontario Naturalized Garden by Lorraine Johnson is still the first book I still recommend to anyone interested in native plant gardening in Ontario. It’s invaluable, no comparison.

Today, trying to buy a copy online, most of the regular prices clicked-through as “sold out”. You can still find new copies here, with prices varying from $19 to $120(!)

Quite likely there are also still pockets of new copies to be found by calling local bookstores, nurseries or gift / book shops at local botanical gardens.

Also, if you live in Toronto there are several copies available for loan through the Toronto Public Library. Outside of Toronto, you can try your local public, post-secondary school and botanical garden libraries. It's no wonder I've come to see libraries more like "seed banks" and conservation areas. Still, if we lose this book from bookstore shelves, native plant gardening outreach and education in our region will have lost a lot.

Let's all cross-our-fingers for a re-print or a new edition. Not that a new edition is needed. The information in this book is still fresh and accurate.

Teaming with Microbes: A Gardener's Guide to the Soil Food Web

Wow. This is like finding out there's a southern hemisphere.

Until I read this book, most of what little soil science and "chemistry" (e.g. over simplified "N-Ph-P" and how-to-alter-your-pH advice) that I had hodge-podged together over the years floated around my mind in scatter-shot unlinked fragments. A lot of it I took more on faith than real understanding, and I also often didn't know what-to-do-1st to start to help heal the problems in my disturbed soils.

Now I know why: most of that soil chemistry is more accurately the processes and products of soil microbiology, and there's nothing mystical or disconnected about it.

I think most of us have been mentally messed-over by the petro-chem hort gardening industries (see the advertisers behind every popular gardening magazine today), but also, a lot of knowledge about soil microbiology is relatively new information too (increased microscopic power in the 90's is what changed this). So while intuitively, we knew that plants, soils and nutrient cycles were more like a super-clever elegant symphony than disparate fields of study, this is the only book that has succeeded in substantiating, factually explaining and pulling-it-all together for me. Which, btw, also means the authors must be really good writers.

If that weren't enough, starting at about page 52 (with a peek ahead at chapter 12), I suddenly started to recognize and then re-interpret dozens of soils / landscapes (old-growth forest -> shittiest dead zones) I've been in, with a new clarity about why (given the criteria of a soil microbiology POV) their plant communities were what they were too! :D That's cool!

There's too much essential and excellent advice in this book to try to sum up, but here's one bone for native plant gardeners: LEAF MULCH. Specifically, dry, brown and aged. Apply it on top of the soil (not into the soil: applying into the soil encourages bacteria more than fungi: which would be fine for annuals and veggies). Why? That mulch will feed and encourage networks of fungi that native plant perennials and woodies NEED to uptake nutrients in at the root level (rhizosphere) below. You can take that on faith or, if you'd rather actually know what's going or to see a lot more excellent advice, read this book! :) It's in circulation at the Toronto Public Library, or buy it. This one's worth it.

Understanding Forests and Forest Restoration

In an earlier post about the upcoming roof gardening conference here in Toronto, I mentioned that Mathis Natvik from Natvik Ecological will be speaking about his urban green roof designs composed of regionally appropriate native plant communities including alvars, sand dune, prairie, oak savannah, cliff face and even wetland species.

I neglected to mention that Natvik is also the pioneer of “Pit & Mound” forest restoration. Stewards and aspiring forest restorationists: if you are unfamiliar with this technique two must-read articles are Pits and Mounds: the missing link in restoring Carolinian Forests, and Pits and Mounds.

You will also want to see:

• The Ultimate Old Growth Forest - Southern Ontario Woodlands" - FON
• “Why you can’t buy a forest in a can” by William Cullina
• Forest Gene Conservation Association: indigenous trees and shrubs list for your area
• Ontario's Natural Selections
  

merry solstice & thank you for getting me to here.

Christmas Fern Polystichum acrostichoides

You know how some years you seem to only be seeing what you've already seen and using the same skills you already knew the year before, but, then, other years your awareness grows like, well, a seed bed of bergamot and tall-yellow-composites?

Well, I've just had a TYC kind of year. Only because I met of a lot of good native plant folks who taught, inspired and encouraged me... or, at the very least, gave me their patience while they answered my questions. :)

Thank you to Evergreen Brick Works’ Native Plant Nursery and stewardship folks Claire Ellenwood, Annabel Por, Emma Rooney, Tristan Iafolla, Samantha Kinoshameg (I wouldn't have created this blog if I hadn't met the 5 of you), Caitlin Langlois and Stewart Chisholm; instructor / eco-restorationist / author Donna Havinga and "coffee shop" plant geeks Anne Bosart & Jagna Zaborska; Theresa MacKenzie and Ralph Toninger at the TRCA; City of Toronto’s Janette Harvey, Cheryl Post, Patricia Landry and Joanna Keddy. Thank you also to Todd Irvine at LEAF for the workshop; invasive plant pro's Steve Smith and Randy Westbrooks; Don Watcher John Routh (the benchmark for all Toronto bloggers) and Paul O’Hara for sending me / my blog encouragement. Also my thanks and admiration to Walsingham / Norfolk County folks Mary Gartshore, Peter Carson, Wendy Cridland, Paul Morris and Matthew Brock: your extensive suites of field naturalist, nursery and restoration skills are blow-my-mind-apart impressive and fascinating, and put to such inspiring and important use, yet some how you still find the time to offer your advice and observations so generously... I can't imagine better stewards or more beautiful lands in their trust.

And also, this seems like a good place to give my overdue thanks to Carolyn Scotchmer, Charles Kinsley, and also to Lorraine Johnson, whom I’ve only read, but if this site had a patron saint it would be her.

I would be one unrealized native-plant-girl adrift without each of you.

So thank you, warm wishes and all best in field season 2008.

Bringing back Ontario's Elms ... and Butternuts too.

photo by Martha Macy

The only elm tree I’ve ever seen is the American Elm in front of the Manulife Insurance building on Bloor Street.

I have to admit, it's an impressive and elegant bit of marketing for an insurance company. The tree was planted in 1934 and Dutch elm disease hit Ontario in the 60's, so I don't know how they've pulled it off; although when it came up at a LEAF workshop, I heard Todd Irvine say “that tree is on A LOT of drugs.”

Drug-addled or otherwise, turns out that tree isn't as lonely as I thought. Apparently 1,600 surviving White or American Elm trees have been reported across Ontario. One's even estimated at 250 years old.

This is what I'm reading in two recent articles by Sharon Oostenhoek: "One Night Stands" in Ontario Nature magazine's Winter 2007 issue and "A dating service for lonely elms" in yesterday's Globe and Mail.

Problem is, these elms are too far apart to breed with each other. That’s where University of Guelph professor Alan Watson elm “dating service” comes in.

Watson tells Oostenhoek that 600 of the 1,600 trees have been visited and confirmed and cuttings have been taken from the most “eligible”. The cuttings (clones) are now saplings. The saplings are being exposed to the fungus that causes Dutch elm disease, to find the ones with the best immunity responses. Once they’re mature enough to breed (about 10 years from now), they’ll be cross-pollinated with each other (more genetic diversity than clones = better chances of surviving this and other diseases). Their offspring will then also be exposed to the fungus, with the hopes that some of them, like their parents -- who "were able to seal off infected branches" -- will also have "the right mix of genes" that provide immunity.

If you have an elm to report or just want to know more about U of Guelph's work, check out their Elm Recovery Project.

Butternut Juglans cinerea

When you look at the range of the Butternut you'll see it's one of our native Southern Ontario "Carolinian" forest trees.

Hopefully, like some elms were able to defend themselves, more than a few butternuts will be immune to the fungus that causes Butternut canker (which BTW is also impacting Black Walnut too).

You can still buy a native butternut tree at Acorus Restoration. Visit their online catalogue and you'll read: "the Butternut tree has come under threat. A disease has killed most mature specimens and some trees are showing resistance. We must plant more to keep finding resistant genes.”

You can find more info and other ways to help out Butternut conservation efforts at the Forest Gene Conservation Association's information on butternut and the butternut canker in Canada.

Emerald Ash Borer Confirmed in Toronto

It was reported in North York, at Shepherd & the 403.

Here's a Q&A from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

It was also recently found in Norfolk County at Turkey Point too: "Norfolk County boasts about 27 per cent forest cover and 15 to 20 per cent of its trees are ash trees... (including) the rare blue ash and pumpkin ash that is only found in Norfolk County in Ontario."

Note: The Emerald Ash Borer is the insect we knew about in Essex and Kent. It is not to be confused with the Asian Long-horned beetle, which has already been in the Vaughn area of Toronto since 2003.

Don Watcher John Routh offered this analysis yesterday:

"Efforts are underway to contain the outbreak but there is little anyone can do. They are very difficult to detect. As a introduced insect it has no natural enemies and no pesticides are known to kill it. Unless a miracle fix is found, we may be looking at a permanent change to our forest."

The City of Toronto's Urban Foresty Services had already suspended planting of Ash trees, and offers more information about these and other tree pests in Toronto.

Carden Nature Festival 2008!

Prairie Smoke

Hairy Beard Tongue

Juniper & Balsam Ragwort

limestone pavement & Smooth Wild Rose

Indian Paintbrush and Balsam Ragwort

If an alvar invites you over for a visit, you go.

Alvars are globally rare -> imperiled. Luckily, here in Toronto, our neighbourhood alvar is less than a 90 minute drive to the Carden Plains, just NE of Lake Simcoe.

What will you find there? Go here to the OMNR NHIC site, and in the empty field beside “Natural Areas Name Search” type in the word Carden & press the "search" button.

Some seriously cool stuff, no? You can make your own field trip but, really one of the best ways to get to know the area is at the annual Carden Nature Festival: they have excellent field trips and leaders, access to lands usually off-limits and it's a fund-raiser with the small activity fees going toward the conservation of the area. See you there!

Green Roofs Conference @ Toronto Botanical Gardens, Feb 21 2008

Honestly, it's too expensive for me (and so far, for everyone else I know too). Guess we'll have to wait for it to trickle down into a book or a workshop. Luckily however inspiration is free: on the speakers list I noticed Mathis Natvik from Natvik Ecological. Get this - he designs urban green roofs with native plant communities from Great Lakes Region habitats, including sand dune, oak savannah, prairie, cliff face, alvar and wetlands. He also grows the plants in his own nursery. How cool is that?

Update: The Toronto Botanical Garden has posted papers from the Green Roof Conference and other green roof resources too.

Toronto’s Lake Ontario waterfront naturalization projects

Want to know about any of the many naturalization plans currently floating around Toronto's waterfront?

1. Go to this Toronto Region Conservation Authority's site and click through the waterfront area you're interested in: East, Central or West Toronto - there are plans along the length of GTA lake front.

2. Often the Waterfront Toronto corporation (formerly the Toronto Waterfront Redevelopment Corporation) involved in the same projects, so you want to look for their communication pieces and designs for the same areas, on the left sidebar of this Waterfront Toronto page.

3. If you're interested in eco-restoration and naturalization -- spend some time exploring the links above, google or wiki some of the keywords (wikipedia is good for really localized community info) and then go out and see the designs, listen and talk to the presenters /representatives / local citizen action groups, ask questions, speak-your-mind, and observe the practical problems, ingenuity and innovation in post-industrial urban eco-restoration. The presentations often offer an interesting quick-study in the natural history of the areas too.

4. If you want to keep up with the revised plans and upcoming public consultation meetings one way to start is by subscribing to the Waterfront Toronto newsletter. If you make it out to one of the public consultations / meetings/ open houses/ presentations, you'll likely also be informed of public citizen groups involved in the same area and their websites or email lists too.

You’ll notice plans for the Don Mouth there too. If you’re interested in any development and restoration going on along the Lower Don River, you'll also want to be following the Don Watcher blog. [UPDATE: March 2008: for current plans pls see Don Mouth Naturalization and Port Lands Flood Protection Project]

Close to my heart and home are the Port Lands and Leslie Spit. If they’re close to yours too, see the:

• Master Plan for Lake Ontario Park, from Cherry Street Beach east to the RC Harris Filtration plant in the Beaches. It's a sexy design, involving capping contaminated post-industrial brownfield with sweeping sand dunes, and a lot of native plantings.
  
• TRCA Terrestrial & Aquatic Natural Area Enhancement Plans for the Leslie Spit (aka Tommy Thompson Park). About the provenance of the native plantings there: Ralph Toninger, a Supervisor of Environmental Projects, Restoration and Environmental Monitoring Projects with the Restoration Section with the TRCA, informed me that the trees and shrubs they plant on the Spit are grown in the TRCA's own nursery near Woodbridge, and their stock is indigenous, in fact "we were the first nursery certified by the FGCA" he said. They've also started to grow their own aquatic species too.
  
• For an intro to the ecology and history of the Spit I still like this TRCA report from 2000 and the "Friends of the Spit" site.

On the sentimental side, I know this is a minor issue, but... at the recent “Tommy Thompson Open House” at City Hall, the TRCA mentioned "a need to replace the pontoon bridge." If you know it, it's an icon, a present you get for getting your ass outside & on your bike, a secret you let speak for itself when you take your out-of-town friends down there ... and I'll miss it.

Of course nothing is perfect. Hot issues include: the canal planned to cut across the base of the Spit; missing opportunities to create a real terrestrial wildlife corridor between the Spit and the Don; how the existing private boat clubs AND the public will both have water access in a continuous water front park. Also, you'll notice that despite progress in the plans or on the sites, some of the last updates are already a year old. As the Port Lands Action Committee (PLAC) has asked Waterfront Toronto's Lake Ontario Park designers in so many words: keep us informed and involved in the process -- we're not just an audience for sexy 'ta-da! we're finished!' perfect presentation -- we want to be informed, consulted participants on the bumpy real road (re-considerations, ruminations, practical design problems) along the way.

Nevertheless, for now, honestly, I'm heartened I'm not looking at plans for yacht clubs and condo's instead, and that in the process I've met good people with good hearts, minds and talent who really are trying to do the right thing.

The best thing to plant under a street tree?

MULCH.

Weirdly this was not initially intuitive to me. Instead I tried solomon's seal, wild strawberry, ginger, violets ... even mints. Then one day I realized: this tree wants me to FEED it. And there began the mulch pile. I occasionally rake it, keep it clean (errant dog poop, odd bits of litter) & of course, I leave some space around the bottom of the trunk so it won't rot.

I've gone this route for about 4 years now. The tree is growing fabulously. And I don't have to worry about bagging leaves in the fall, or the tree's roots getting dinged by too much heat (the mulch keeps them cooler) or drought in the summers because of poor soils that are unable to hold organic matter (& thus not able to hold moisture.) What-do-the-neighbours-say? "Smart." Last year at the height of summer (when the mulch pile is low, brown & decaying) one neighbour said "I like the natural look of it, let's continue it down 3 properties." :)

BTW: This tree is a basswood, and as it turns out, basswoods make exceptionally good leaf mulch and they require it too. "Basswood is a soil enhancer. Its leaves are very rich in calcium and magnesium, and well above average in nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus content. They are living, breathing, non-polluting fertilizer factories. Decomposed basswood leaves nourish and neutralize the soil, boosting the growth of basswoods themselves, as well as surrounding trees and other flora ... [it uses it leaves to] ...ensure its own health and growth." - Glen Blouin, An Eclectic Guide to Trees east of the Rockies.

Though a tree grows ever so high, the falling leaves return to the root.- Malay proverb

Update:

• Spacing Magazine's Fall 2007 "Green Issue" has an entire article by Todd Irvine about mulching around street trees.
• More of Todd Irvine's writing can be found on Tuesdays at Spacing Wire

Growing trees.

An excellent article about Toronto's urban forest by LEAF's Todd Irvine appeared last Sunday in the Toronto Star. Excerpted from greenTOpia: Towards a Sustainable Toronto Vol.3

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"Carolinian Canada" is a big place. A lot of plants are actually very regionally specific. For example Redbud is only really native down near Point Pelee, and Winged Sumach only occurs in Norfolk and Prince Edward Counties. Ever tried to find which tree and shrub species are really indigenous to your region? Check out Forest Gene Conservation Association's list of trees and shrubs native to the Toronto area / eco-district 7E4. Also see this site for native trees and shrubs elsewhere in South-central Ontario.

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We're not just growing plants, we're growing soils and the biota who live there. This is especially important in urban and suburban areas where so much of our soil-life has been heavily disturbed and destroyed. In past few years we've started to clue-in to the necessary role of mycorrhiza fungi in tree health. Check out Mycorrhizae: Unsung Heros of Forest Health from the Ontario Arborist.

Identifying and Managing Invasive Plants - A Resource List for stewards and gardeners in Toronto and Southern Ontario

“The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the pieces.” - Aldo Leopold

"Invasive species are the second biggest threat to wildlife and plants worldwide. Habitat destruction is the first." - E.O. Wilson

And that is why I've made this list of invasive plant resources. I hope you find it useful too.

Toronto and Ontario invasive plant information:

• Invading Species Awareness Program - Plant Species - Ontario Federation of Hunters and Anglers recommended
• Controlling Invasive Plants - City of Toronto Urban Forestry
• Invasives Research – Fletcher Wildlife Garden, Ottawa ON recommended
• Evergreen’s Native Plant Database - advanced search (select "only invasive species") recommended
• Invasive Exotic Species Ranking for Southern Ontario, Urban Forest Associates Inc., 2002 recommended
• "Stewards in the City: a handbook for Greater Toronto stewards" Evergreen 2005 currently not available online recommended.
  
• Invasive Plants of the Toronto Islands
• Natural Invaders - Ontario Nature / FON
• Invasive plant fact sheet - Toronto Region Conservation Authority
• Ontario Terrestrial Invasive Plant Council Inaugural Meeting, October 2007: agenda & links to presentations
• Ontario Stewardship Network - Invasive Species Initiatives
• Sustaining Biodiversity: a Strategic Plan for Managing Invasive Plants in Southern Ontario recommended
• Midwest Invasive Plant Network (incl. Southern ON) recommended

Invasive plant online resources & databases useful in Ontario:

• TNC Weeds Invasives and Control, Global Invasive Species, The Nature Conservancy recommended
• Global Invasive Species Database – The Invasive Species Specialist Group (ISSG) recommended
• USDA PLANTS Database recommended
• Vermont’s Wise on Weeds
• Invasive Plants Atlas of New England - IPANE.org
• Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources - Invasive Species
• Invasive Plants - New England Wildflower Society
  
• E*vue: Emergent Vegetation of the Urban Ecosystem
• Invasive Species Weblog
• List of Invasive Plants of Canada - RBG Burlington, Canadian Botanical Conservation Network
• Invasive Alien Species in Canada - Hinterland Who’s Who
• Invasive plants of Natural Habitats in Canada by White D.J., E. Haber and C. Keddy.1993
• The Northwoods CWMA - Northern Wisconsin
• PCA Alien Plant Working Group – U.S. Park Service

Get involved locally:

• City of Toronto Stewardship volunteering recommended
• Evergreen and Brick Works stewardship volunteering recommended
• High Park Volunteer Stewardship recommended
• Greater Toronto Area stewardship & "green" groups by watershed recommended
• Stewardship Ontario & Ontario Invasive Plant Council
• 10 Tips For Emerging Invasive Plant Management Groups

Choosing native plants to replant when removing invasives:

• In this blog's links list, see
• Native plant nurseries / sources
• Native plant gardens & naturalized yards: how to's & plant recommendations

• Native tree and shrub species for Toronto area & other areas in Southern Ontario - Forest Gene Conservation Association
• Evergreen’s Native Plant Database
• Native Plants recommended for Toronto - City of Toronto’s Urban Forestry
• Restoring the Don: Recommended Plants – Task Force to Bring Back the Don

Invasive plant & wildflower field guides useful in Ontario:

• Invasive Plants: A Guide to Identification, Impacts, and Control of Common North American Species – Sylvan Ramsey Kaufman, Wallace Kaufman. 2007 recommended
• Weeds of Canada and the Northern United States - France Royer, Richard Dickinson. Note: agriculture based but useful
• National Audubon Society Field Guide To North American Wildflowers: Eastern Region

Local legislation:

• City of Toronto’s Pesticide By-Law & Natural Alternatives
• Toronto Ravine and Natural Feature Protection By-law
• Ontario’s Noxious Weed legislation

More Control Methods and Research:

Note: many control methods / “removal protocols” and info about past and current research are already included in the links above.

• Weed Control Methods Handbook: Tools and Techniques for Use in Natural Areas - Wildland Invasive species Team - The Nature Conservancy recommended
• Invasive Exotic Plant Management Tutorial for Natural Lands Managers
• APWG-L Alien Plant Working Group Listserve
• T.C. Fuller & G. Douglas Barbe. The Bradley method of Eliminating Exotic Plants from Natural Reserves CalEPPC News, Vol. 5, No.4, Fall 1997 recommended
• Thonas D. Brock. The Bradley Method for Control of Invasive Plants The Newsletter of the Invasive Plants Association of Wisconsin, Issue 3 October 2002
• Current Research: The Biological Integrated Pest Management Research Unit USDA, Agricultural Research Service

About Pesticides:

• PAN DBASE- Pesticide Action Network North America
• EXTOXNET - Toxicology info briefs
• PEPSIS DBASE - Pesticide Products Information System - Pesticides Advisory Committee, Gov't of Ontario
• Ontario Pesticide Training and Certification
• City of Toronto’s Pesticide By-Law & Natural Alternatives

Updated July 2008

October 26: Carolinian Canada AGM London & Invasive Council meeting RBG Burlington

Doubled booked:

Carolinian Canada Coalition Forum
"Impacts of climate change on southwestern Ontario's unique natural features …and best management practices for an uncertain future." Followed by their AGM & Lorraine Johnson’s “Natural Treasures” book release.

and

Inaugural General Meeting of the Ontario Council on Terrestrial Invasive Plant Species
"Speaking with One Voice"
Royal Botanical Gardens Burlington Ontario

LEAF - Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests

Trees are good -- this you already know, but it takes a little learning to know how to be good back to them. Growing trees in cities is another set of skills too. Luckily here in Toronto we have the good folks at LEAF to walk us through it all!

If you aren't already a fan of this non-profit, local, grassroots, urban forest advocacy group, check out the LEAF site. Not-to-be-missed: their Tree Tenders workshop, Toronto Tree Tours, Backyard Tree Planting Program & factsheets. While you're there, sign up for their newsletter. You don't want to miss out!

I've used some of their resources before (love 'em), but last night was my first experience with their Tree Tenders workshop. Already I can't recommend it enough. And I can't imagine a more sincere, interesting and knowledgable instructor than Todd Irvine. If Todd hugs trees, I hope the trees hug him back!

Books: urban public space gardening

Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto by David Tracey. New Society Publishers, 2007

“...Guerrilla gardening can be summarily defined as gardening in public urban spaces with or without permission. Gardening by the citizens .. In his excellent manualfesto – both political and practical as the name implies — Tracey traces the history of this movement … he advocates organized group action …offers practical advice on how to obtain free or low-cost equipment, plants, trees and soil …teaches basic horticultural techniques and provides examples of successful campaigns in cities like Seattle, Vancouver and Montreal. .. As he reminds us, native plants are always better than exotic ones …This book is a manual as well as a manifesto but it is also something else: a very readable and humorous narrative of urban environmental efforts in modern times.”

-- excerpts from the book review Sowing content by Maya Khankhoje at the rabble.ca book lounge.

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If you're interested in this, you'll also want to check out Lorraine Johnson's Tending the Earth: A Gardener's Manifesto

Stewardship & Community Planting Events

Update: Check back in late winter for the 2008 schedule for Stewardship Teams & Community Planting Events from the City of Toronto - Parks, Forestry and Recreation, Natural Environment & Community Programs

New Brick Works area trail map!

Download Evergreen Brick Works great new trail map by Marlena Zuber

Native prairie plants - the best option for sustainable biomass / biofuel production?

Photo by P.D. Pratt

Article from Treehugger:
"…Researchers at the University of Northern Iowa's Tallgrass Prairie Center (TPC) are looking at ways to use the state's mixed prairie plantings as a source of renewable energy — as biomass to produce ethanol or to burn for electricity… A study conducted this past year by David Tilman, an ecology professor at the University of Minnesota, had demonstrated the potential for polycultures of multiple grass, prairie and wildflower species to serve as an alternative to switchgrass in producing ethanol. Tilman and his colleagues found that, in addition to producing more than twice the biomass than single-species planting (not less than 238% more than switchgrass), multiple-species plantations restored biodiversity, grew on degraded land and — perhaps most importantly — could be carbon negative. Biofuels derived from this source could also store up to 51% more energy per acre than corn…"

Ok - not my field of expertise, but it immediately sounds better than corn or switchgrass mono-crops. It's also relevant here because if it were successful, it might lead to opportunities for increased awareness about native prairie plant communities, habitats & restoration (& also native prairies as models for sustainable polyculture agriculture too: see the 2nd chapter "How will we feed ourselves?" in Biomimicry - Innovation Inspired by Nature, by Janine M. Bengus, but I'm sure that's a-whole-'nother blog out there).

A spontaneous summary of Native Plant Girl's Toronto & southern Ontario Tallgrass Prairie resources:

• Want to know about southern Ontario native prairies, restoration & stewardship? Tallgrass Ontario is the first place to go!
• Planting the Seed: A guide to Establishing Prairie and Meadow Communities in Southern Ontario
• Former prairie locations and existing remnants in Toronto, check out the map on Page 6 of this High Park restoration management report and its related maps.
• Learn how to find OMNR NHIC Natural Area reports for prairies and savannahs throughout southern Ontario.
• Maps of Ontario Tallgrass Prairie - past and present from U of T Botany 307F.
• if you haven't already, well you just have to see this drawing of Root Systems of Prairie Plants compared to turfgrass.

Invasive plant species education in Toronto and Ontario - What we can do.

"Local Invasion: The Garlic Mustard plant is an invasive species that inhibits the growth of native plants. The best time to remove the plant is in the Spring prior to its seed development in June. Composting is not recommended, as the seeds remain viable for up to 5 years."
- An example of a quick fact that can be added to a newsletter.

I just saw Vermont's "WOW" Wise on Weeds & "Recognize. Remove. Replant." invasive plant species public education program for the first time today.

And now I want to see similar invasive plant species public outreach / education awareness in Ontario too.

I especially liked their "Invasive Exotic Plant Fact Sheet Series "

I've been thinking about Vermont's 3 R's... and now I notice that I'm going a few steps further when I'm confronting an invaded area:

1. Recognize: ID the species and read about what they do (which species and habitats and ecological functions they degrade and displace) and how they do it (including how the species is spread and its reproductive biology). Also ID existing native and invasive plants in the area.

2. Remove: look-up and use established "removal protocols" and tools for specific species.

My favourite way to find removal protocols is by looking up its ESA (Element Stewardship Abstract) at TNC Weeds. (They also have great links on the left about manual control methods and more!)

Concurrently, plan on removing other invasive species in the same area.

3. Dispose: e.g. do not put seeds or roots or reproductive parts of an invasive plant into garden compost.

4. Remediate: in urban areas, remove cultural or post-industrial garbage and gravels from soils; if you have impossibly dense compacted clay and need to improve drainage, dig in horticultural sand (not playground sand, that's a recipe for brick making); add mycorrhizae and bone meal (natives like its natural slow release) as supplements (ask at a larger local nursery) at the time of planting; get off synthetic fertilizers entirely (many just-add-water or "Miracle" N-Ph-P products are salt-based and actually dehydrate your soil biota to death); add 1.5 ->2.5 inches of leaf and bark mulch to soil surfaces to encourage beneficial fungi, and very small amounts of compost to soil surface (native plants can be harmed, burned when compost is added directly to root zone) to encourage beneficial bacteria species. Update: "Teaming with Microbes" – excellent book for learning about your soils, how to remediate them and how to keep them healthy too.

5. Replant: let the area's sun light levels, moisture, soil texture, pH, minimum winter temperature help you decide which native plants (and ideally native plant communities) are suited for the area, and, where possible, look to existing or historic native plant communities in the area for guidance. Our historic plant communities here in Toronto and Southern Ontario include dry-moist prairies and meadows (each full sun), woodland (mostly shade but can include some sun), forest (deeper shade). Replant with common hardy native species (even aggressive colonizers (e.g. obedient plant, big-leaved-aster and ginger in worst invaded areas); plant in seasonal guilds (Steven Murphy writes about this in SER-O's Native Plant Nursery Guide 2007-2008) e.g. in shaded areas: bloodroot, ginger and mayapple in spring -> zig-zag goldenrod in same area come fall). This ongoing coverage will shade invasive seeds from germinating, and populate and use soil resources otherwise vulnerable to being exploited by invasives. Also, in woodland / forest / shade areas plant for all layers: ground cover, herbaceous perennial, shrub, tree.

6. Return: go back to the same area and weed; remove tree guards; learn from the plants that made it, and those that didn't (ask why); replace vacancies created by plants that didn't make it; replace decomposed mulch; water during establishment phase and drought. After plants are well established, try more sensitive / less common natives appropriate to the area, but please avoid really habitat-specific rare species and species-at-risk (e.g. bird's-foot violet, most native orchids, Britton's Moss Phlox, Indian Pipe, Indian Paint Brush and native wild blue lupines have very low survival rates outside of their specific habitats and it's depressing to watch them die quickly or slowly over years in a garden ...while you realize that they shouldn't have even been exploited from their natural habitats.)

7. Prevent: includes prophylactically planting in bare soils; cutting invasive weeds before they go to seed e.g. while in bloom (may be necessary to cut several times during growing season). Public education.

Stewards, gardeners, field naturalists: we're already out there on the land and educating and organizing in our communities,and, although I wish we didn't have to confront it (not to mention the things I'd rather do), we've seen it first hand, we know what's happening and at the very least, we each know a spared place left we can't bare to think of becoming invaded & destroyed.

Public education is something each of us can add even a few minutes attention to, each of us can easily integrate invasive species awareness into our walks & workshops, newsletters, fact sheets, articles, blogs, websites, meetings, events and our groups' agendas.

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UPDATE:

• The Ontario Federation of Hunters (OFHA) and Anglers has taken the lead. Check out this "invasive plants" section of their Invading Species Awareness Program.

• To stay informed about invasive plant initiatives in Ontario, including the Ontario Invasive Plants Council, keep your eyes on Ontario Stewardship's Invasive Iniatives page.
• Here's a list of invasive plant resources I find useful in our area.

Tending the Earth - A Gardener's Manifesto - Lorraine Johnson

Lorraine Johnson is Toronto native plants gardener, writer and lecturer.

This morning I was reminded again -- by Garden Route Therapy blogger, steward & Horticultural Therapy student Emma Rooney -- how often folks who may have never even heard of Lorraine Johnson or this book, soon recognize it as "the book I have always wanted to read" (Marjorie Harris).

Unfortunately, it's a few years old now & is becoming more difficult to find/buy (of course I know you'll try your local indie bookstore 1st, but even Chapters is sold out of both editions of it). I hope it eventually goes into re-print, but to be safe, if you haven't read it yet, you might want to check it out soon. Shop around, I've seen prices vary by $20.

If you're in Toronto, you can also literally check it out through the Toronto Public Library.

If you can / do buy it, I recommend considering buying a second copy, just to lend out. I can't think of another book with legs like this one. It seems to go exactly where it's meant to be.

Garlic Mustard: Negative impact on hardwood trees, seedlings, mycorrhiza & rare West Virginia White butterflies

A Perspective on the Ecological Ramifications Of Garlic Mustard
by Donald A. Sutherland - Biodiversity Section of the OMNR

“The garlic mustard/sugar maple relationship would give Norway maple an additional competitive advantage, particularly in the ravines of Toronto and other riparian areas of southern Ontario where garlic mustard is abundant. Garlic mustard could reduce or eliminate the soil mycorrhizae necessary for the survival of sugar maple seedlings and thereby give a competitive advantage to Norway maple. I have no idea whether Norway maple seedlings are similarly dependent on soil mycorrhizae for their survival, but both exotic, Norway maple and garlic mustard have presumably evolved together. Norway maple produces abundant seed with high viability rates and is tolerant of air pollution such that it has already a competitive advantage over the native Sugar Maple in urban and near-urban areas. In more native forest situations, a loss of sugar maple could in the long term have grave implications for forest song birds which are dependent on the many sugar maple-obligate invertebrate species which feed on the maple. Many forest lepidopteran species, for example Bruce's Spanworm, are largely dependent on sugar maple and the loss of these species (and particularly their larvae) could considerably reduce available food for forest birds and their nestlings.

Garlic mustard is already posing a serious problem for one of the province's SAR butterfly species. The West Virginia White, currently a special concern species in Ontario, is a relatively widespread but uncommon forest butterfly throughout its eastern North American range. The larval host of the West Virginia White is a native member of the mustard family, called toothwort. Increasingly, West Virginia White is being observed nectaring on the closely-related, early-flowering garlic mustard; however, not only is garlic mustard a common source of nectar for the butterfly, but the West Virginia White is preferentially laying its eggs on the exotic mustard. The eggs hatch, but the mustard is evidently unpalatable to the maturing larvae and the butterfly larvae don't survive beyond their first instar - thus garlic mustard is effectively an ecological cul-de-sac for the West Virginia White. Never abundant, the West Virginia White has recently been placed among the ranks of globally rare taxa by NatureServe, largely thanks to problems with garlic mustard.

There is often the perception that some exotic species are benign. Exotic species are never benign they only appear so because their impacts haven’t yet been recognized.”

Please also see:

• Invasive Plant Suppresses the Growth of Native Tree Seedlings by Disrupting Below ground Mutualisms. Stinson KA, Campbell SA, Powell JR, Wolfe BE, Callaway RM, et al. (2006) PLoS Biol 4(5): e140
• Invasive species harms native hardwoods by killing soil fungus - Steve Bradt, Harvard University, Apr 26/06 “Find is first to identify specific mechanism by which invasive plants harm native species”
• Garlic Mustard photos & information: Global Invasive Species Database – ISSG – Garlic Mustard

• For more information please see other