Native Plant and Widlife Gardening Opportunity!

Join us Sunday night at 7pm, at the 8th Street Pocket Park Native Plant Garden (at the corner of 8th and Grant) for an hour of light weeding and garden clean-up.  This is a great opportunity to learn to identify native plants, learn gardening techniques and see some easy to grow beautiful native plants in action. 

Ranger Orientation
Since the planned events don't work with everyone's schedules, several neighbors have requested to do an "independent study" that is, to be assigned tasks that they can work on outside of scheduled clean-ups.  We are really excited about this, and those that have volunteered  we are calling Pocket Park-Rangers! So, if you'd like to be assigned a task, come by for an orientation.  The types of things for the independent studies are dandelion patrol and removal, mowing the horseshoe court, trimming the grasses along the edges of the park and the ditch, trash pick-up, and maybe watering some new transplants. 

Here is a little background on the park:
The 8th Street Pocket Park is a small neighborhood park my wife and I have been volunteering our time and donating plants and materials to for over 5 years including planning, landscaping, grant writing and maintaining the park (click here for more information). This was an unused right of way (owned by the city) that was not being maintained, cared for, and had just turned into a gathering area for trash and noxious weeds. We transformed 1/2 of it n 2008, using drought tolerant native plants, and incorporated many wildlife features.  In 2009 we received a grant for plants, mulch and other landscaping materials and in 2010, we completed the park. Funding for materials for this project has come from the Missoula Office of Neighborhoods, UM Natural Areas, and Montana Native Plant Society. Materials were also donated by Home Resource (like recycled lumber, fencing, lawn edging and more), and plants and bird, bat, bee houses and interpretive signs were donated by Butterfly Properties (that is, my wife and me).

Our neighborhood is deficient in parks and open spaces. Landscaping this site transformed existing public space from an unusable state into an attractive little park. While the final product meets a community need (more park space), the process of creating the native plant landscape also engaged neighbors visitors to the area.

Also, while you are at the park, check out the various houses- bee (below), bat (above) and chickadee nest boxes in the garden. 

You can stay up to date on all the happenings in the little native plant garden by liking it on Facebook.  Also, here is the event page for the clean-up event.

If you come, bring some gloves and weeding tools if you have them.  And don't forget your camera!

Spring Clean-up at the Native Plant Garden Pocket Park

Join us Thursday evening April 19 from 6:30-8:00 at the little pocket park my wife and I have been landscaping for the last several years.  Click here to learn more about this project of ours.  We'll be doing some weeding, and general clean-up of old stems and branches.  This is a great opportunity to learn about native plants, and native plant gardening while helping out a little community park.
Also, if you are interested in goings on at the park, "like" our Facebook page!  And, here is the event page for the clean -up night.
If you are interested in coming, bring some gloves and weeding tools if you have them.  I hope to see you there!

Community Native Plant Garden Volunteerism: International Edition

A guest post by David's wife.

We just got home from a week in Glacier & Waterton Lakes National Parks. Together the parks have been designated an International Peace Park because of efforts to manage the landscape cooperatively, and because the shared boundary between the parks (Glacier in Montana, USA, and Waterton Lakes in Alberta, Canada) is the longest stretch of unprotected border between the two nations. It's a nice feeling. The parks are completely breathtaking. We did a lot of hiking, fishing, wildlife viewing, and of course, we volunteered at the native plant garden in the Waterton townsite.

Yes, that's right, there is a beautiful native plant demonstration garden right in downtown Waterton. And because we were on a charmed trip (staying in the Prince of Wales Hotel for a few nights, backpacking back and forth across the Canada-USA border, spotting 11 bears on the trip, seeing not only two white-tailed ptarmigan on the Carthew Ridge, but also TWO pomeranians- Chester and Sadie) it worked out that we were there in time to participate in the weekly volunteer sessions. Can you believe it? I know!

When we found out about the volunteer night at the garden, we were all over it. Volunteer nights in the garden are fairly new (Friday from 3-5 pm), and are led by Parks Canada Interpretive Specialist David Musto. Lois from Lethbridge is a regular volunteer in this and other plant restoration projects in Waterton (both are pictured below). We enjoyed visiting with them, exchanging ideas about community garden projects.

We loved the garden. It surrounds an old cottage-y style government building and has huge swathes of goldenrod (Solidago spp.), fireweed (Epilobium angustifolia), asters (Aster spp.) and blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata). Penstemons (Penstemon confertus, and other P. spp.) and dryas (Dryas octopetala) were in seed.

We spent some time weeding familiar things like black medic and cheatgrass. I was just getting set to go after some quackgrass when it was already time to go.

It's a wonderful project and I hope that people will participate as part of the outstanding interpretative programs offered in the park.  If you are going to Waterton, stop by and check it out! 

And now for the important, local segue...

If you aren't going to be in Waterton, there is a similar awesome volunteer opportunity for you just south of the border here in Missoula.  This Thursday August 18th from 6:30-8:00pm we're having a volunteer night at the 8th Street Native Plant Pocket Park.  Tasks include collecting seeds, pulling some bindweed, and a general cutting back of things (for aesthetics). Here is the link to the Facebook event:

 http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=210942235621783

and of course we want you to go to the new Facebook Fan Page for the Pocket Park and "Like" it.

See you there, or right here on the blog. Happy Late Summer and best wishes to our international friends working on urban native plant gardens.  We just found a like minded project in Chile thanks to the wonders of Facebook. We're happy to see people everywhere embracing their native species in urban areas.