Anyone going past Southminster United Church in the last year or so might have noticed that in the midst of surrounding construction, the grounds of the church offer a little pocket of green on Bank Street. With the work on the interior of the church building completed, the church is now envisioning what this remaining green space could be.

The Green Dreamers are out and about once again! You may have seen a few recently at the Library and the corners of Bank Street and Sunnyside Avenue. Their silent green “tag” is unmistakable. They leave a trail of “loved lots” all along Bank Street and Sunnyside Avenue. And yes, there were a couple of Dreamers sighted at Grosvenor this last week tidying up one of OOS’s rain gardens. In late June another solo Green Dreamer was spotted on the grounds around the Firehall.

“Invasive” is a word used to describe any plant or animal that is growing or multiplying to the point of driving out other species. It’s out of control. It’s not in balance with the rest of the plants and creatures in its ecosystem. An invasive species can be native, but it’s most often non-native. But just because a plant is not native, doesn’t mean it’s invasive. Most of the horticultural varieties in our gardens are non-native, but they behave themselves and don’t spread all over your yard. They are not invasive.

However, there are some very invasive species in Old Ottawa South, and you should know about them.

Despite not being able to visit inside the library this summer, we've all certainly enjoyed the outside yard, thanks to hard work of the Green Dreamers. Here's a few snapshots of volunteers from the Green Dreamers putting the garden to bed for the winter. 'Til next year!

Well the autumn leaves are tumbling down and the weather is turning colder both day and night now. Our 15 garden beds, after a summer of glorious sun and intermittent rain fared very well after a slow, dry start in July. Because of COVID, our volunteer group of eleven dedicated gardeners were delayed in starting this spring because of the City’s restrictions on community ornamental gardening. Green Dreamers took our direction from the City’s Adopt-a-Road Program about the start-up date after lockdown.

The volunteers of the Bridge to Bridge community reforestation project will be planting a limited number of trees and doing clean up maintenance this weekend on Saturday, October 3, 2020 at 9 am. We will meet along Canal Woods Terrace at the bottom of Aylmer Avenue.  We have a small number of trees to plant, and maintenance – pruning and cleaning up around the base of the trees – on many of our grown trees.  So please bring shovels, pruning shears, and pruning saws if you have them.  Gardening gloves are also a good idea. Feel free to bring your kids to help out and learn about trees.

Diligent watering and weeding has paid off. And heat and sun has done the rest.

Gardening Restart June 22, 2020

Wouldn’t you know it as soon as I wrote the last update we got the word from the city Adopt-a-Road program manager that we could restart gardening respecting physical distance, wearing gardening gloves of course and having no more than 10 people at the bed at any one time.

Our local gardening group has had an unusually easy beginning this spring season with the Covid outbreak. My spouse Mike and I took over the job of coordinating this group which was so ably done by Winnie Pietrykowski and Brian Ure for the last four years.

A striking plant with many small white flowers and large dark green leaves may catch your eye at the Sunnyside library garden. Lots of people ask the name of this perennial.