Reintroducing native plants to Fish Creek Provincial Park Achi-News

The Friends of Fish Creek State Park Association is looking for gardeners to sign up for a project called ‘Grow With Us.’

The idea is to get people across Calgary to plant a variety of native species, and then harvest the seeds, which will be planted in Fish Creek Provincial Park.

The organization says it is a huge project, because Fish Creek is the second largest urban park in Canada, covering an area of ​​13.48 square kilometers.

“It’s scary,” said Emma Stroud, a biologist who serves as team leader for the park’s ecology and conservation program.

“Sometimes you can look at it as discouraging, but also sometimes it’s quite motivating, because the park is so bad in some places, it’s only up from there.

“When you’re left with a really crappy canvas, there’s a lot of things you can do – little differences that make a big difference in the grand scheme of things.”

The area was part of the Bow Valley Ranch in the late 1800s.

Back then, it was home to thousands of cattle. Native grass was replaced by agricultural crops, smooth grass, crested wheatgrass and ryegrass.

Today, more invasive species such as ornamental plants have come to the park from neighboring communities.

“Native species really like a heterogeneous landscape, so you want tall plants, small plants, dense ones, for the critters to hide in,” says Stroud.

“We’re mostly in the Foothills Fescue Natural Subregion here, so we have very bulky plants that can tolerate drought, things like sage, rough hill fescue, wild bergamot, some strawberries, everything from small plants to larger bushes.

“There is a lot of diversity in grasslands.”

Stroud says the native species are better adapted to Alberta’s southern climate and can withstand freezing spring mornings and drought cycles.

“It’s been difficult with the water crisis we’re facing in Calgary, but a lot of these natives have been standing straight, they don’t need to be watered long term, they really drought tolerant,” he said. .

Stroud says the public response to the Tyfu Gyda Ni program has been positive.

“It’s been really surprising how many people have signed up to take part in this,” he said.

“We have volunteers who have now planted whole patches in their garden, we have community gardens, and schools who have been asking us to come out and help them, so it’s been fantastic.”

Rose and Will Ratliffe are long-time volunteers with Friends of Fish Creek, and say they jumped at the chance to help the park re-establish native plant species by taking plants for free and putting them in their yard.

“We have some really cool native plants that we’ve dug up and stuck in the ground, and we’re hoping they’ll grow and spread,” Rose said.

“We have some tick seeds and we have a variety of pussy toe, we have some frilly sage and this is called metal chickweed, I believe.”

The couple have replaced the grass along their fence that runs along the back alley with their native garden plots, and put in more than 150 plants.

“A garden can be a small piece of a meter across. You can go crazy like we have, and go big,” said Will.

“It’s really easy, we’ve been delighted with how well these plants have survived.”

“We have neighbors who are talking about doing the same thing. I hope that eventually we will give the neighbors a seed if this becomes too much.”

Stroud says the Grow With Us program is a cost-effective way to repopulate the park with native plant species.

“What we want is to give people the plants for free, and then once they start producing seeds or propagating plugs, we’ll take some of that back to put in our restoration sites and keep the cycle going to go,” he said.

“The whole goal is really to create a sustainable seed cycle that doesn’t depend on commercial availability.”

You can learn more about the program by visiting the Friends of Fish Creek website.