Re-Wilding Project
Vision
We wanted to create a native, self-sustaining, pollinator garden, in an urban setting. We were hoping it would increase biodiversity in the surrounding area and resiliency against the climate crisis, as well as reconnect people that live in urban environments, who may feel disconnected from nature. Our gardens, if widely implemented, could also serve to increase the health of citizens by creating cleaner air and reducing summer temperatures. Since our garden would be native and best suited to our current climate, it would be entirely self-sustaining and not require the excessive amounts of tending and watering that our current non-native common garden plants do.
Action
We worked with a local organization and a botanist to create our garden design, we focused on plants that thrive in an urban environment, are native and able to withstand our current environment, compliment each other, are aesthetically pleasing, and have staggered blooming dates to ensure year round beauty. After that we began to search for a place to plant our garden, we wanted somewhere urban and small, even just a parking lot corner. Our local library branches became interested and we met with several employees. We settled on planting our garden in an abandoned plot at Turner Park Library. We then obtained money through the LSF grant and bought all our plants, Green Venture helped us purchase the remaining materials and let us borrow their gardening tools. On June 14th, with the help of volunteers, we got to planting. After that, the garden can now take care of itself!
Reflection & Celebration
Our garden is now entirely self-sustained and self-managed, only in cases of extreme drought or heat will it need to be tended to. Right now, we are working on creating an educational sign to place beside our garden. We want to educate the community on the benefits of a garden, and show them how easy it is to implement!
We are all so proud of our project and how far it has come! We love seeing community members enjoying it at the library. In the future we hope to create more of these gardens, especially in our own homes.
We were also told that our gardens were so wonderful that library higher-ups are considering including them in their climate change policy that would make it mandatory for all Hamilton library branches to have these gardens. This hasn’t been confirmed yet but it’s lovely to think about the impact our project has had!