GaLTT’s Invasive Species committee has been busy! Having received a BC Parks PEF (Park Enhancement Fund) grant of $1500 to expand existing planting sites for our Drumbeg Provincial Park habitat restoration project, committee members consulted with BC Parks Conservation Specialist Erica McClaren and Kristen Miskelly of Satinflower Nurseries in preparation for this year’s Fall planting.
Two work-parties were held in September and October to prepare the new sites and did do some further clearing work on the original restoration sites.
On a windy day at the end of October ISC members and invited volunteers planted plugs, corms and bulbs for a total of 200 native plants: yarrow, woolly sunflower, fool’s onion, and camas.
Seeding of the expansion sites and areas where orchard grass had been removed followed a few days later when the winds had died down, using a seed mix from Satinflower Nurseries that contains five different native grasses and eight flowering plants— bare-stem desert parsley, blue-eyed Mary, common camas, field chickweed, sea blush, spring gold, woolly sunflower and yarrow.
Every year we push back the invasives at Drumbeg a little more—most visibly Scotch broom, but there are several others—and then do additional work to replace them with native species and encourage other native plants such as Garry oaks to move back in. All the time spent for this summer and fall added up to 65 volunteer person-hours on site, and that’s not counting the time spent on research and consultations. So it’s great to be able to look back at “now and then” photos and see the impact of our work: we really DO make a difference! If you want to volunteer to help with this or other GaLTT invasives control work, contact invasives@galtt.ca.
Then… broombashing in 2019…
…and now: replanting in the same area.
And don’t forget to root out invasives on your own property and nearby public areas, and replant native species where it’s appropriate. GaLTT can’t do everything—but teams of neighbours working together probably can.
