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March 28, 2022 Meeting

Once again the Hort Zooms onto your computer - click here from 7pm on Monday March 28 to see, hear, and participate in our meeting. Reminder - to see the full Bulletin, click "View this email in your Browser" above. This is a joint presentation with Project Swallowtail. The speaker's information is just past the special announcement below:

Just added: I was on a zoom with musicians, poets, singers, composers. One of them, Andrea Kuzmich, had just helped organize and perform in a benefit for Ukrainian relief. She sent us this link and said that she thinks the methods for Ukraine assistance in it are reliable, based on her knowledge of and involvement in the community:

 https://linktr.ee/UkraineResources


Also, the gov't of Canada is matching all contributions to the Canadian Red Cross Ukraine Relief fund, up to $30 million.
 
Andrea said the funds raised by her benefit were in the hands of people in Ukraine and Poland within hours after the concert. We will play just a few minutes from that concert at our meeting. Tell your friends with Eastern Europeans connections to watch!

Talk - Buzzing about Native Australian Bees - Kit Prendergast

Southwest Australia is a biodiversity hotspot that includes the Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub ecoregions of Western Australia. The region has a wet-winter, dry-summer Mediterranean climate. Its flowers are famous worldwide.

above: Kangaroo Paws, Anigozanthus manglesii. Photography by Gnangarra, CC by SA 2.5

"Bee Babette" Dr. Kit Prendergast studied West Australian bees and their relationship to their human and floral landscape for he Ph.D. She does a lot of outreach, as her poster below suggests.

Dr. Prendergast also designs her own line of bee-related clothing and volunteers in a circus!

Kit will tell us about the bees and flowers of Western Australia, and how gardens in towns and suburbs affect the native bees.
 

Help! I need somebody

(Help) not just anybody
(Help) you know I need someone, help
So much younger than (me) today...

During April, May, and June your Editor (me, moi, he/him) will be overloaded (I am already, hence this Bulletin going out late!). There are two choices:
  1. a very short Bulletin, or
  2. Help! with articles and pictures and announcements
So, to avoid premature compactification of our venerable Bulletin, please send your contributions to newsletter@parkdaletorontohort.com by the middle of April or May, 

 ------>Garden Projects - Apply NOW! <-------- 

Each year we support community garden projects with grants. Grant applications are due by April 1! Find all the information and forms at this page.

You can find a map of past projects and their reports here. This month we feature a report from the St. Martin-in-the-Fields project:

Our garden is treasured by our parishioners and by the local community.  It is an oasis of calm and peace and this is especially needed by many in these pandemic times.  Last year work in our garden continued normally with volunteers following all Covid protocols. 

We are continuing to plant native North American species as they are better acclimatized to our hot, humid summers and harsh winters.  To this end, we were very lucky to receive two large donations of native plants, one from a parishioner and another from Project Swallowtail whose goal is to encourage such plantings in our area.  It was not a very dry summer and most new plants survived.
 
Fall is bulb planting season and hundreds of new and replacement bulbs should ensure a lovely display again this spring.   With all the planting, weeding, pruning and cleaning that was done last year, we would like to thank all our volunteers who worked so continually all summer. Our garden remained looking splendid with many geranium donations, few weeds  and with our boxwood cross surviving the moth infestation. 


We received another donation from The Horticultural Society of Parkdale and Toronto and this enabled us to purchase triple mix, manure and mulch. 

We would like to thank all our volunteers and donors who have done so much to keep the St. Martin’s garden vibrant, flowering and such a wonderful asset to the community.  Volunteers are always needed however, and we encourage anyone who likes outside work to join our small, dedicated group. 
Submitted by 
Ingrid Whitaker 

 
 

Garden Projects:
Charles G Williams Park,
 High Park-Sorauren Corridor, and Project Swallowtail

The Hort has been working with Friends of Charles G Williams Park to help them make a Pollinator Garden at this green space just south of Sorauren Park. We're happy to announce that they have permission from the City to proceed with this 80 foot garden bed this spring, to which the Hort is contributing funding. There will be lots of work in April and May to get it going - if you can contribute your labour, please use the Contact form at the above link to volunteer.

And not to be outdone, Project Swallowtail co-founder and speaker to the Hort Pete Ewins is working intensively with people along the High Park to Roncesvalles corridor to make more Boulevard Gardens. If you want to help, please contact Pete for more information.

Finally, Project Swallowtail has helped York University graduate student Anthony Ayers find sites in our area to census bees during 2021 and the flowers they used. Anthony presented a preliminary summary of his results to Project Swallowtail. It's early days, but some of the sites he found with more bees than average were Project Swallowtail gardens.

Articles

Healing, traditional Healers, and their Plants

by Clement Kent

Last month I wrote  "Plants have a lot more tricks up their green leafy sleeves than I was ever taught in school...". Diana Beresford-Kroeger knows those tricks from both the traditional and scientific side. A New York Times article on her tells how as an Irish youth, she

"...spent her summers with Gaelic-speaking relatives in the countryside. There, under the tutelage of a maternal grandaunt, she was taught ancient Irish ways of life known as the Brehon laws. She learned that in Druidic thinking, trees were viewed as sentient beings that connected the Earth to the heavens. She was also versed in the medicinal properties of local flora: Wildflowers that warded off nervousness and mental ailments, jelly from boiled seaweed that could treat tuberculosis, dew from shamrocks that Celtic women used for anti-aging."

As a university student a few years later, Dr. Beresford-Kroeger put those teachings to the scientific test and discovered with a start that they were true. The wildflowers were St. John’s Wort, which indeed had antidepressant capacities.

I chose the image of St. John's Wort, above, from a beautiful collection "Teaching in the Botanical Garden of Padua at the turn of the 19th century". In the 19th century physicians were expected to know their herbals and plant uses, just as Dr. Beresford-Kroeger learned from folk healers.


Diana Beresford-Kroeger

All this and more is in her excellent 2019 book "To speak for the trees : my life's journey from ancient Celtic wisdom to a healing vision of the forest". I wrote before about "Forest Bathing" and other uses of the forest for human health. To Speak for the Trees takes you deeper into that and is a very engaging autobiography as well. She speaks about her projects in Ontario, where she lives near Ottawa, to help restore native plants to gardens and forest, with preserves, parks, and phone apps she has created in collaboration with Indigenous guardians such as Sophia Rabliauskas, of the Poplar River First Nations. She has modest future goals:

"Diana’s legacy project is to clone and map the entire global forest. This process is similar to medicinal stem cell cloning where the DNA is preserved unchanged remaining in its native form.  A living bank of tree seeds must be put together to either mend or amend what remains of our global forests. Creating a living library of the global forests will preserve the forests for generations to come."

Diana says "Rebuilding the global forest is the cheapest and best defense against climate change” and suggests a simple action for all of us to take to help with global climate change: Pledge to plant one native tree each year for six years to help save our planet.

Condé & Beveridge win Governor General's Award - Clement Kent


Last month we featured "Pandemic Gardens", an exhibit in London ON and one piece - Carole's Garden, by the perennially green team of Carole Condé + Karl Beveridge. We said:
"Carole and Karl use the forms of mediaeval and Renaissance art to comment on very current political images. Look carefully at their piece, or click on it to go to their bio at Pandemic Gardens. What current issues are they confronting in the context of Carole's backyard garden?"

 Carole's Garden, Carole Condé + Karl Beveridge, 2021 - in the Pandemic Gardens show.

We are prescient: just after writing the above, we were delighted to see that Carol and Karl received a 2022 Governor General's Award in Visual Arts. In the image below from the Governor General's website, can you make out what Karl is working on?


Congratulations to these socially engaged Toronto gardener-artists!
 

Sunflower Seeds for Ukraine, Discounts for Members
The Spring Plant Fair: with the Covid BA.2 wave building up in Ontario, we just don't know if we can use an indoor space for the Fair. So, we're looking at possible outdoor locations - rain or shine! Watch this spot.

One thing we'll have, if you Help!, is Sunflower Seeds for Ukraine. I've received some 3,500 sunflower seeds. Our plan is to repackage these (Help! needed). Right now you can get a package of about 15 seeds for $3 (plus shipping) from an Ontario supplier. We'll put 20 seeds (with your Help!) into blue and yellow packages and sell them for $5. The Hort will donate $2.50/pkg to a Ukraine refugee, childrens', or medical supplies fund. Send email to newsletter@parkdaletorontohort.com if you can Help! make up packages.
 Слава Україні!



Discounts: our sunflower seeds will be marked up for a worthy cause. But if you are a paid-up Hort member, you'll be receiving an email from us in early April confirming your membership, which you can print out or show from your phone to Fiesta Gardens or Not So Hollow Farm to claim your discount. Discounts will only be available to paid-up members, and may not apply to all items - please ask at the store/farm.

Contact Information for the Hort

The 2021 Board members are:
  • President - Ron Charlemagne, president@parkdaletorontohort.com
  • Past President - Barbara Japp
  • Vice President - Clement Kent, newsletter@parkdaletorontohort.com
  • Treasurer - Emieke Geldof, treasurer@parkdaletorontohort.com
  • Secretary - Helen Vorster, secretary@parkdaletorontohort.com
  • Projects - Judy Whelan, projects@parkdaletorontohort.com
  • Members at Large - Annelies Groen, Sarah Michelle Rafols
Other email:
  • Maria Nunes - Volunteer Coordinator, volunteers@parkdaletorontohort.com
  • Membership, membership@parkdaletorontohort.com
  • Dues payments and membership information, www.parkdaletorontohort.com/join-us/
  • Clement Kent, Bulletin/Newsletter editor - newsletter@parkdaletorontohort.com
  • Plant Fair Team, plantfair@parkdaletorontohort.com
  • Education & Outreach,  educationandoutreach@parkdaletorontohort.com
  • General information, info@parkdaletorontohort.com
Email sent to board@parkdaletorontohort.com reaches all board members.
Website: www.parkdaletorontohort.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/parkdaletorontohort
Post: The Horticultural Societies of Parkdale & Toronto
P.O. Box 30023, 1938 Bloor Street West
Toronto, Ontario M6P 4J2
 
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Horticultural Societies of Parkdale & Toronto · 1938 Bloor St West, PO Box 30023 · Toronto, On M6P 4J2 · Canada

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