Native plant project aims to bring new life to northeast Calgary green space

Amir Said · CBC News

· Posted: May 24, 2025 8:25 PM EDT | Last Updated: 8 hours ago

A collaborative task betwixt EcoLogic Horticulture and the City of Calgary volition bring autochthonal shrubs, grasses, flowers and much to Rotary Park this spring.

Visitors to the northeast Calgary parkland volition soon find the iconic Centre Street Bridge lion sculpture surrounded by everything from prairie fume flowers and wolf willow shrubs to grasses similar bluish grama and wildrye arsenic portion of an assortment of astir 1,200 autochthonal plants.

The extremity is to assistance found "a autochthonal works assemblage that's based connected notation sites wrong the foothills," said Nathan Gill, proprietor of EcoLogic Horticulture, during a gardening lawsuit connected Saturday.

'It's truly to supply an illustration to Calgarians of what autochthonal grassland looks like," helium said.

The geographic ecoregion being recreated is called the unsmooth fescue grassland, said Gill.

According to the Alberta Wilderness Association, the state has the largest country of unsmooth fescue grassland successful North America, with the ecoregion dominating the prairies and foothills.

"It's thing that we person little and little of each the clip due to the fact that astir of the onshore astir the city's cultivated, and astir parks person been vegetated with non-native species," helium said.

To forestall the caller plants from being outcompeted, the task required each non-native works taxon to beryllium removed to marque mode for the reintroduction of autochthonal plants.

Plants beforehand steadfast ecosystem

Along with beautifying the area, 1 of the goals of the task is to enactment section wildlife by providing much homes for birds, bees and different autochthonal carnal species.

Many insects beryllium connected plants similar the ones being planted successful Rotary Park for nutrient and to reproduce, said gardener Elaine Rude, attending the lawsuit arsenic a typical of the YardSmart programme tally by the Calgary Horticultural Society and the city.

"If you commencement astatine the bottommost and physique connected it, you volition pull tons and tons of autochthonal wildlife arsenic it matures, but initially it's going to beryllium mostly the insects," she said.

Those insects volition marque mode for birds, portion the ample plants volition pull herbivores similar muskrats and cervid arsenic portion of a steadfast nutrient chain.

"These are plants that they usage to past on. They're astatine the bottommost of the nutrient concatenation and past the others volition provender connected them, truthful it completes the circle. Everybody wins, each creature," said Rude.

City parks and unfastened spaces spokesperson Rachelle Nuytten hopes to spot these autochthonal plants spell beyond Rotary Park and into people's yards and gardens.

"We privation to show for Calgarians that are utilizing the parkland that these are autochthonal plants that they tin adhd to their ain yards," she said.

Gardening with taxon that person evolved alongside autochthonal animals goes a agelong mode toward helping pollinators similar bees and butterflies thrive.

"Our autochthonal pollinators, they request autochthonal plants. They can't get pollen from conscionable immoderate plants," said Nuytten. "So adding those to your gait volition mean that you volition spot immoderate of our autochthonal insects and birds precise happily visiting your yard."

Beyond promoting a healthier ecosystem crossed the city, autochthonal plants necessitate little attraction and are hardier than introduced species.

"Native plants person precise heavy wellness systems," said Gill. "In our area, due to the fact that we person prolonged periods of drought, they've adapted implicit thousands of years to find a mode to past successful our hard climate."

Those endurance skills besides let autochthonal plants to past Alberta's harsh winters, dissimilar those successful places similar Calgary's Central Memorial Park, wherever imported plants request to beryllium brought indoors erstwhile temperatures plummet.

"In the wintertime time, they each person antithetic endurance mechanisms to enactment done the winter, but their beingness is successful their roots," said Gill. "And past erstwhile outpouring emerges, they travel back, and greenish up, and turn for different year, and the rhythm continues twelvemonth aft year."