For the birds, bees, and butterflies

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/06/2020 (2177 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A local community garden in St. Vital is growing in more ways than one.

The St. Vital Agricultural Society’s latest project is the Manitoba 150 Pollinator Garden, which is located next to its Sesquicentennial Community Garden, which was created in 2017, on the Bishop Grandin Greenway southeast of where Glen Meadow Street meets St. Michael Road.

According to Karen Fontaine, a society director and the sesquicentennial garden’s co-ordinator, said the new project is being undertaken in partnership with the Monarch Teacher Network of Canada (Manitoba Region). So far, a team has excavated a large rectangular strip of naturalization land, added soil and a mulched path next to the community garden and — on June 6 — a team of community and master gardeners planted 500 wildflowers and native grasses, which have been donated by the network and Prairie Originals.

Noting the society’s pride about the project, and its gratitude to the network and Prairie Originals for providing the plants, Fontaine said the roles of Cathy Shaluk at the network and Kelly Leask at Prairie Originals are integral in the project. She emphasized the importance of educating community members about the habitat being cultivated in this expanding corner of agricultural activity on the greenway. One of the core goals of the pollinator garden is to create a habitat for monarch butterflies and other pollinators to help protect these critical species.

“We had 13 people out to help with the planting, and we have a team in place that will continue the weeding and watering over the summer months to get the garden established,” Fontaine said, noting another community garden next to the pollinator garden is on the horizon for 2021.  
“By next year, some of the native plants should be blooming. The thing with native plants is that if they get established, they do really well, as they have a long, deep-root system and they’ve very hardy. They look after themselves, and they’re wonderful for the birds, bees, and butterflies.”

The fact the female monarch butterfly will only lay her eggs on a milkweed plant amplifies the significance of the pollinator garden to the area.

“This makes milkweed a very important plant,” Fontaine said. “Everything we’ve planted has a positive place in the system, which makes it pretty neat.”

Fontaine said watching the growth and evolution of the sesquicentennial garden — where community members rent plots from the society — has been an incredibly rewarding experience in the last three years.

“It’s been one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had. We have lots of good people, and there is lots of good gardening. And since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, this project has become quite special, as it’s the only thing some people have been able to do. Gardening didn’t get cancelled, and Mother Nature is still here.”   

As well as swamp milkweed, the native perennials and grasses that have been planted in the garden include purple prairie clover, white prairie clover, pearly everlasting, gaillardia, and big bluestem grass, Manitoba’s provincial grass, Fontaine said.

Email svascommunitygarden@gmail.com or mtnmanitoba@gmail.com for more information.