Zsuzsanna lends a hand in planting our donated bulbs on Sunday, Oct. 23, 2011 during a stewardship day in Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard.
If you’ve ever heard the African proverb or John Heywood’s famous idiom “many hands make light work,” you’ll understand what Growing for Green’s Sunday stewardship events are all about. Anyone can join in, as the more people who come and help out, the more work we get done. No special skills are needed – just a desire to get your hands dirty and work in the garden!
Last Sunday, on October 23, 2011, a small group of seven dedicated volunteers did just that, and pitched in to do a fall planting in the pollinator garden. Some pruned, others weeded or picked up debris but most spent the time planting. Yes, fall is one of the best times to plant.
A heap of bulbs, in fact about 120 daffodils were kindly donated by Toronto Parks and Trees Foundation as part of the Better Urban Landscapes with Bulbs (BULBS) program, a partnership between Toronto Parks and Trees Foundation and Take BAC, which beautifies public parks and green spaces with spring flowering bulbs. Of the lot, about 72 were Red Devon (orange) and 48 were a mix of Carlton (yellow) and Mount Hood (white) daffodils. To date, dozens of community groups like ourselves have benefitted from the BULBS program, and a whopping 190,000 daffodil bulbs have been planted across Toronto in the past four years. Special thanks go out to Claudia Fazzari, at the Parks, Forestry & Recreation department of Urban Forestry, for her help in organizing the bulbs on our behalf. For more information on the BULBS program, click here.
To plant the bulbs, we dug down about eight inches, added a thin layer of sand for good drainage, and then placed each bulb pointed side up. Spots were refilled with dirt and lightly tamped down to create a firm surface. We topped each planting with a blanket of hay and gave the area a good watering. TIP: Try not to break bulbs apart, as it can weaken them.
And if that amazingly generous donation wasn't enough, we also received a number of shade plants from City Parks & Recreation thanks to Diane Tomlin. Growing for Green thanks her for purchasing the plants on our behalf and including us in this endeavour. We were thrilled with our new additions of five Oregon Grape holly shrubs and nine Cranesbill geraniums (half Splish Splash, and half Johnson Blue), and eagerly set them into soil. It was a wonderfully productive day as we dug out more of the fading junipers, and filled some of the holes that we had between other plants with our fall bounty. Now we’ll all have to sit back and wait to see the amazing show of colour come spring!
Thanks to everyone who came out. We hope to see more of you at these events. Be sure to get on our e-mail list by signing up at communityorchard-subscribe@mylists.ca so we can let you know when the next one is.
Suzanne Hartmann
Gaetano sports his new volunteer T-shirt while digging in the Pollinator Garden.
