Thatch is Good

Today, the Parks Canada maintenance staff cut and vacuumed the grassy areas of Riel House. You can see the vacuum machine in the background. The thatch has been dumped next to our pile of wood chips. During the summer, we will use the thatch as mulch in the Produce Garden and Kitchen Garden.

Woodland Path

Today, we added a new layer of wood chips onto the Woodland Path. If you look just to the left of the path, you can see some of the native plant debris that we added to Area 1. Since this debris is full of seed heads, we anticipate that some of the shade loving seeds will emerge and start to populate this area that, in years past, has been overrun with burdock, an invasive plant.

Sleep - Creep - Leap

Native plants take three years to establish themselves. 

• The first year - they sleep; growing roots and establishing themselves in the soil.

• The second year - they creep; slowly expanding their territory.

• The third year - they leap. 

See below for how native plants have progressed in our Parking Lot Garden.

Sleeping in 2015

Creeping in 2016

Leaping in 2017

Three Flowered Avens

Three Flowered Avens (Geum triflorum) is an early native plant bloomer. Here they are in the Road Garden on May 7:

Three Flowered Avens blooms in May and June. Only the Prairie Crocus (Pulsatilla patens) blooms earlier. Our plan is to add the Prairie Crocus to the south-facing Berm this year.

Cleaning up the Native Plants

Now that we are into the new year, we have cleaned up the dead material from the two native plant beds: the Road Garden and the Parking Lot Garden. 

Road Garden - before

Parking Lot Garden - before

We had left the dead plants all winter for several reasons:

• snow gets lodged between the stalks and keeps the ground wet when it melts
• native plant seeds are a great food resource for overwintering birds
• bird poop from overwintering birds is a great fertilizer
• it is a habitat for wild animals - indeed we found several nests during cleanup

Here are the results:

Road Garden - after

Parking Lot Garden - after

You will notice that the beds looks messy. Yes, they are! The cut material went back into the beds as organic matter to help with moisture retention or, if it was too deep, the debris went into one of the four areas of the Woodland Path. Since there were still seeds in this material, some native plants may now grow beside the Woodland Path. See the Appendix A in the 2018 Activity Report for a map of this part of the property.