The apricot trees in Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard have been surrounded in drama this year.

For years, the dogwood bed on the west side of Ben Nobleman Park has been a bit of a challenge. Each year, city gardeners work hard to clean it out. But the weeds and dogwood suckers always grow back so quickly.

This year, the volunteers of The Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard worked together with acting park supervisor Nancy Carneiro and a team of fantastic gardeners from The City of Toronto Parks Department to transform this bed into a shady oasis.

We decided to mulch the dogwood bed using the cardboard mulching technique (also known as “lasagna gardening”!) and we accomplished this in four steps.

Welcoming Beneficial Insects to Our Orchard

It’s mid June and the volunteers of the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard are preparing for a slew of new orchard guests. These guests are beneficial insects and we want lots of them!

Beneficial insects do a lot of work in our garden. Some are pollinators and they play an essential role in fruit production. Others are predators that prey on insect pests that damage trees and crops including aphids, coddling moth and plum curculio.

So we are transforming our pollinator garden. We want it to include carefully chosen native plants that offer habitat and food for beneficial insects. In recent weeks, volunteers have been busy weeding the garden, thinning out unwanted plants, and laying down compost.