Registration is now open for the fall campaign, from September 13 until October 15, 2021. Clean-up kits will be made available for pick-up at seven City of Ottawa facilities that are able to safely accommodate their distribution. 

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.

April 18-24 is National Volunteer Week. It’s time once again to say “thank you” with a big round of national applause and to recognize you locally for all that you do to enrich our communities. You, by your simple acts of kindness, encourage and nurture trust in people, trust in institutions, a sense of belonging, civic engagement at its best and a socially diverse and inclusive community.

The National Volunteer theme this year is “The Value of One, The Power of Many.” This simple mantra reflects upon the value of individual acts of kindness and how these small generous acts can grow into the power of many working together towards a common purpose.

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.

Our team of local volunteer gardeners needs to replenish the ten city plant beds we care for on Bank Street between the bridges, and on Sunnyside Avenue. Because our limited budget has been strained due to COVID-19, we cannot cover the cost of new plants so would appreciate your help.

The Green Dreamers will be collecting plant donations on Saturday, September 26,2020 from 9 am to noon at the Firehall.

The Enviro Crew of Old Ottawa South is growing! In less than 4 months, we have had lots of interest from the community, a few projects on the go, and over 100 members in our Facebook group.

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.