Native plant project aims to bring new life to northeast Calgary green space

A collaborative project between EcoLogic Horticulture and the City of Calgary will bring native shrubs, grasses, flowers and more to Rotary Park this spring.

Visitors to the northeast Calgary park will soon find the iconic Centre Street Bridge lion sculpture surrounded by everything from prairie smoke flowers and wolf willow shrubs to grasses like blue grama and wildrye as part of an assortment of around 1,200 native plants.

The goal is to help establish "a native plant community that's based on reference sites within the foothills," said Nathan Gill, owner of EcoLogic Horticulture, during a gardening event on Saturday.

'It's really to provide an example to Calgarians of what native grassland looks like," he said.

The geographic ecoregion being recreated is called the rough fescue grassland, said Gill.

According to the Alberta Wilderness Association, the province has the largest area of rough fescue grassland in North America, with the ecoregion dominating the prairies and foothills.

"It's something that we have less and less of all the time because most of the land around the city's cultivated, and most parks have been vegetated with non-native species," he said.

To prevent the new plants from being outcompeted, the project required all non-native plant species to be removed to make way for the reintroduction of native plants.

Plants promote healthy ecosystem

Along with beautifying the area, one of the goals of the project is to support local wildlife by providing more homes for birds, bees and other native animal species.

Many insects depend on plants like the ones being planted in Rotary Park for food and to reproduce, said gardener Elaine Rude, attending the event as a representative of the YardSmart program run by the Calgary Horticultural Society and the city.

"If you start at the bottom and build on it, you will attract lots and lots of native wildlife as it matures, but initially it's going to be mostly the insects," she said.

Those insects will make way for birds, while the large plants will attract herbivores like muskrats and deer as part of a healthy food chain.

"These are plants that they use to survive on. They're at the bottom of the food chain and then the others will feed on them, so it completes the circle. Everybody wins, every creature," said Rude.

City parks and open spaces spokesperson Rachelle Nuytten hopes to see these native plants go beyond Rotary Park and into people's yards and gardens.

"We want to demonstrate for Calgarians that are using the park that these are native plants that they can add to their own yards," she said.

Gardening with species that have evolved alongside native animals goes a long way toward helping pollinators like bees and butterflies thrive.

"Our native pollinators, they need native plants. They can't get pollen from just any plants," said Nuytten. "So adding those to your yard will mean that you will see some of our native insects and birds very happily visiting your yard."

Beyond promoting a healthier ecosystem across the city, native plants require less maintenance and are hardier than introduced species.

"Native plants have very deep health systems," said Gill. "In our area, because we have prolonged periods of drought, they've adapted over thousands of years to find a way to survive in our difficult climate."

Those survival skills also allow native plants to survive Alberta's harsh winters, unlike those in places like Calgary's Central Memorial Park, where imported plants need to be brought indoors when temperatures plummet.

"In the winter time, they all have different survival mechanisms to work through the winter, but their life is in their roots," said Gill. "And then when spring emerges, they come back, and green up, and grow for another year, and the cycle continues year after year."