As you're driving down country roads in the springtime you might happen to see the bright purple clover growing in the ditches, or the tiny wild yellow lady-slippers, or the striking bright oranges of wild tiger lilies or the soft violet wisps of the three-flowered avens, otherwise known as prairie smoke. And of course, the softest purple of the prairie crocus often pokes their heads up in pastures while the snow is still on the ground. Spring is coming and so are the native wildflowers of Manitoba.
Bee City Brandon is a local organization that champions our native pollinators, and they've set to restoring Brandon's Eleanor Kidd Park to its former glory days, not to the Victorian garden that it once was before the flooded Assiniboine River destroyed the park, but to be a pollinators' garden filled with native plants, grasses and flowers.
Committee Chair, Sherry Punak-Murphy says the project started last spring when the City of Brandon asked Bee City Brandon to partner with them in cleaning up the park and turning it back into the green space for residents and visitors to enjoy.
"We jumped on the opportunity to turn it into a pollinator garden, and then we realized there were only five of us! How are we going to tackle this big project?" explains Murphy. "So, we went to the University of Manitoba Landscape and Design department and those students took the blueprints for Eleanor Kidd Park and they designed what could be done there."
The students had to take into account the native prairie plants and what species of pollinators are local to the Brandon area, and what these pollinators need to survive.
"It was such a good exercise for these students, and they came up with these brilliant designs, which was way more than what we as a little committee could do," shares Murphy. "We were able to pick some parts out of everybody's designs, and so then we had to start applying for grants. And our first grant we got from the Central Assiniboine Watershed District so we could plant some native plant plugs."
Before the committee and their volunteers could roll up their sleeves to get their hands in the dirt, the park needed some serious clean-up. That's where the City of Brandon offered their services to clean up all the garbage that had collected over the years, fallen branches and sticks, remove the weeds and unwanted plants out of the flower beds, added more topsoil, worked it in and the committee was ready to go.
They received hundreds of seeds and plant plugs from Skinner Native Seeds, and also grew some seeds of their own with the generous support of Brandon U allowing them access to the university's greenhouse. In May and June of last year they planted those hundreds of plant plugs. They're eager to get back to planting more plants come May and June of this year.
"We want to baby these little guys until they're ready to grow up," adds Murphy.
Of course, that will take more volunteer hours and Bee City Brandon is asking for volunteers to come and help, not only to return to the spring planting but also to help tend the gardens throughout the summer.
"We want to baby these little guys until they're ready to grow up," adds Murphy. "So, if you were to go to the garden now in the spring, when the snow melts, you're not going to see much because native plants grow down first, and then they grow up. And so, our volunteers will need to know how to distinguish the weeds from these young native plants."
A recent grant from the Brandon and Area Community Foundation has allowed them to purchase more plants, adding up to 40 different species of native plants and grasses to add to the gardens at Eleanor Kidd Park.
Educational signage is a key factor in this project, to share the history of the park as well as the prairie plants and our very valuable prairie pollinators.
Eleanor Kidd was an amazing woman, says Punak-Murphy. "She brought the first Humane Society to Brandon. She was iconic, this woman, so they named the park after her after she passed away. And we think that in her memory, she would like the fact that we're making it a park for pollinators for animals as opposed to just a park for people."
Bee City Brandon's catch phrase for the park is 'For pollinators, plants and people!'
This is our little catch phrase for the park is, 'For pollinators, plants and people' because it's the importance of the little animals that we are providing food for and then the education component because we want people to realize about pollinators, how important they are to us, to our food system and how we're losing our insects and how important it is to create habitats for these creatures."
"So, yes," adds Murphy, "at the end of May and the beginning of June we'll be needing volunteers to help plant the plugs and to weed, because we don't want sweet clover and all that sort of weedy kind of species. We want the native plants to grow."
Visit Bee City Brandon Facebook page and website page for more information and upcoming events ... and to volunteer with spring planting and summer weeding.