We are thrilled to announce:
LEGS was one of 44 community groups to receive a PollinateTO grant this year! Much thanks to the City of Toronto for supporting pollinators and biodiversity in this great city!
Did you know?
“Since 2019, PollinateTO has supported 150 community-led projects and more than 400 gardens (24,000 square meters), including 41 in Neighbourhood Improvement Areas and Emerging Neighbourhoods and 66 on school grounds. “
For more information about the program, buzz on over to PollinateTO!
INTRODUCING:
BACKGROUND:
If you’ve ever been over to the Daily Bread Food Bank, you’ll know that, in addition to our community garden plots, we steward an orchard, grow herbs, and have been slowly building a pollinator garden (right at the front entrance) since 2017.
With some help from Project Swallowtail, we finalized the first stage of the pollinator garden in 2021. It’s looking great but there’s still so much to do to make this special place a welcoming home to native bees, visiting butterflies, and the other pollinators we rely on to ensure that our garden crops and apple trees are pollinated and grow in abundance.
As more and more people in Toronto are facing food insecurity, we believe that community gardens like ours can help people access safe and nutritious food, and with this grant we can dedicate more time and energy to showing others how to grow food and deeply appreciate that we can’t do it without the birds, bees, mammals and insects that pollinate the food we eat.
THE THREE GOALS OF THE POLLINATOR PATH:
1. Expand the Pollinator Habitat
- Add more plants, shrubs and trees with diverse pollen and nectar sources to support pollinators.
- Add a safe nesting area for ground-nesting pollinators / native bees.
- Add water area for pollinators.
2. Develop Educational Programming
- 3 of our members are certifying as Pollinator Garden Stewards with Pollinator Partnership Canada to learn how to maintain the Pollinator Path and be ready to run education tours in the summer and fall.
- We will also run seed collection, planting, and native species growing workshops throughout the year.
3. Create a self-guided tour
- We will create and install 8 – 10 ‘waystation’ signs. Each will focus on one native species, indicate which pollinators it attracts, and have one fun “Did you know?” fact. Potential plants include: Goldenrod, Common Milkweed, Serviceberry, etc.
- We will develop an interactive Pollinator Path map on the LEGS website for those who want to access more detailed information online.
We are so excited to start work on this project, and will be posting more information over at our Pollinator Path Garden page, so check regularly for updates! In the mean time, we have several volunteering opportunities:
- Pollinator Nesting Habitat Creation and Maintenance
- Composting / Waterbarrel Set Up
- Mapping / Tagging Plants
- Weeding / Seed Collecting / Maintenance.
Send us an email at legsetobicoke@gmail.com if you are interested in helping!