The Altona Community Action Network (ACAN) and members of the Altona-Gretna Trans Canada Trail committee hosted a workshop at the Millennium Exhibition Centre (MEC) on Jan. 13.
Glen Koblin of Ducks Unlimited and Kelly Leask of Prairie Originals were invited to explain the benefits of native plants and how to start planting them in your own backyard.
While the weather prevented Leask from attending, Koblin educated the small crowd with a slide presentation featuring various species and how to manage them.
“It’s easy to plant introduced species because they are plant-bred to pop out of the ground and grow very easily,” he said. “Native species and native plants aren’t plant-bred so they’re harder to grow and it’s harder to understand what it takes to make them grow.
“I’m trying to make people understand that there is some thought process into growing. There is a stepwise approach. It’s not overly complex but you have to put more thought into it. There is a science to it, and you have to be somewhat methodical.”
Koblin has been working on the Trans Canada Trail project, which will see over five miles of tall prairie grass inhabit the landscape between Gretna and Altona.
“I’m seeing more and more projects where communities are getting back to nature with their local environment or in their backyards,” he said. “I think it’s the right thing to do, but there’s also a lot of economics driving it. A lot of places can’t afford to keep spending money on maintaining and managing and they start to run out of resources.
“When you put in a sustainable landscape that’s low maintenance and low management, there’s other options besides intensive management that is cost saving to everybody. So, it’s really lucky that economics are involved in planting a product that should be in the ground anyway, but now there’s a driver in society because of that.”
Koblin says the communities of Gretna and Altona are lucky to have this opportunity.
“It makes sense to put the intrinsic value next to a trail so when you think about how the land is broken, railways are put in, and how it changes the landscape. We’re letting the railway change the landscape to be there but we’re bringing back the intrinsic value that was there prior to it. You wonder what it might have been like at the turn of the century when they did break that land or even before the 1800s, what the original settlers would have seen when they went down that trail. This is what it was like and how peaceful it was. You talk about the wind blowing in the grasses and the songbirds and all the biological activity that’s alive out there.”
Koblin notes there is still much work to be done along the Trail.
“This is going to be an ongoing project. We’re perfectionists, and we won’t stop until we’re satisfied with it.”
Trans Canada Trail committee member Gord Sawatzky says the regeneration and revegetation of the Gretna-Altona Trail is a two-year contract with Ducks Unlimited.
“We started planting last summer and we’ll continue this summer to get that whole trail—50 feet from the center of the trail on both sides —planted and growing. They’ll be there around May long weekend to reseed a few places that didn’t germinate last year. Then we’ll start planning what kind of native trees to plant there, as well.”
