pathways | an educator's notebook

Well, the dust has settled enough for me to write a quick update on the native plant demonstration garden we've been working on on Fredericton's northside.

We've completed another season of work at the site since I last wrote about the project. Most of the work in summer 2007 was concerned with weeding, and splitting up and planting out many of the plants that have grown so well in the meantime. David Smith, our project partner at Save A Plant, still visits and maintains the site regularly, and — other than losing a Rush aster (Aster juncifomis) to the elements, having one of our False Solomon's seals (Maianthemum racemosum) stolen, and a retrieving a wandering Shadbush (Amelanchier arborea) (not quite sure what happened there...) — everything has remained intact and is responding well to the full sun of the site, which is unusual for these particular native species.

Our planting map now looks like this:

Twenty-nine species in total. Recent additions to the list include:

Viburnum trilobum (Highbush cranberry)
Taxus canadensis (Canada yew)
Artemisia stelleriana (Beach wormwood)
Tradescantia pilosa (Spiderwort)
Cimicifuga racemosa (Black snakeroot)
Larix laricina (American larch)
Stylophorum diphylla (Wood poppy)

Strips of bark donated from Odell Park were used to make an intentionally ramshackle fence; along with some boulders donated by the City of Fredericton, these help to break up the lines of the site and make for more interesting visuals.

Some pictures from late summer 2007:

In addition to the flyers / posters we produced to help advertise the project, we also produced a 24-page handbook that discusses the rational behind the CityScapes initiative and the benefits of planting native species and maintaining riparian buffers, while providing all the information required to choose the best selection of native species for your green space, the ecological benefits of each, and what to consider when planting at a particular site.

When funds permit, we intend to mass-produce this handbook and make it available to gardeners and householders for free at local nurseries and garden centres.

Finally, we designed two interpretive panels for the site based on the content contained within the promotional flyers; one discusses the CityScapes initiative in general, the other focuses on the demonstration garden in particular.

With generous in-kind support from the City of Fredericton, these interpretive panels were successfully installed at the site late in the summer of 2007.
 

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