volunteer!

Get involved in learning about and protecting our local biodiversity with:

- Ottawa Field Naturalists’ Club (including Fletcher Wildlife Garden)

- Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS)

- Friends of the Jock River

- Greenspace Alliance of Canada’s Capital

- Canadian Wildlife Federation (Backyard Habitat Program)

- Ottawa-Carleton Wildlife Centre

- Ottawa Stewardship Council (cool turtle nesting project)

-  Real Action in Lanark

- Friends of Petrie Island

Safari 7 in NYC

Love this idea!

Safari 7 is a self-guided tour of urban wildlife along the 7 subway line. The 7 Line is a physical, urban transect through New York City’s most diverse range of ecosystems. Affectionately called the International Express, the 7 line runs from Manhattan’s dense core, under the East River, and through a dispersed mixture of residences and parklands, terminating in downtown Flushing, Queens, the nation’s most ethnically diverse county.

Safari 7 circulates an ongoing series of podcasts and maps that explore the complexity, biodiversity, conflicts, and potentials of New York’s ecosystems. (This project) imagines train cars as eco-urban classrooms, and invites travelers to act as park rangers in their city.

A collaboration between The Urban Landscape Lab and MTWTF.

(All above details from their website.)

grass cultivars for the north

Would love to see him talk some day:

"Grasses and Grasscapes: From the Four Corners of the Earth to You"
A Talk by Dave Demers

Dave Demers, a modern day plant hunter and garden designer, delighted his audience with his sumptuous photographs of grasscapes in the wild, and in cutting-edge gardens. Mr. Demers, who has traveled the world to discover plants in their native habitats, outlined and described the best grass cultivars for our northern landscapes. Dave currently owns Cyan Horticulture, a design-build landscape company in Vancouver.

Streets back to Parks.... (Montreal)

“We’re looking at streets and asking ourselves, ‘Is it really useful’,’’ he said in a recent interview. “We’ve identified about 20 streets that are not useful, that can be taken out and retransformed into green spaces.’’ Mayor of Montreal on the Project Montreal

From Daily Commercial News

winter flowers

It is well known that you can create a heaven for birds by planting native wildflowers such as purple and yellow coneflowers, bee balm, larkspur, black-eyed susan, and maximilian sunflowers.

What you may not know is that you could keep these flowers and others through the winter to continue to attract birds. Flowers such as cosmos, snapdragon, zinnia, cockscomb, aster and larkspur can be left to let dry where they stand after their bloom is finished.

Here are more details:

Daisies
These delicate flowers produce seed heads that attract finches, cardinals, sparrows and others. Simply allow daisies to go to seed at the end of the season and watch the birds flock to your garden as the weather becomes colder.

Zinnias
Do not deadhead the plants at the end of the season. Simply allow them to go to seed naturally and enjoy the flocks of birds that gather to harvest the seeds.

Purple Coneflower
This quick-growing plant returns each year with bigger and brighter blooms. It produces a sturdy seed head that supports the weight of large birds, which stop to reap the harvest.

Black-eyed Susans
These produce thick seed heads and when left to go to seed provide seeds for wild birds.

Coreopsis
These flowers brighten the landscape during the summer and produce seeds that attract a variety of birds in fall and winter.

Information from:
- Birds and Blooms
- Birdwatchers Digest

Image from Flickr: Kim Naumann