What a weekend!!
Our most labor intensive, draining and engaging planting event to date saw literally hundreds of families, festival goers and curious passers-by release their inner childhood artists and help decorate our repurposed broken canoe turned giant planter on Friday night, with several returning Saturday morning to learn how to convert a portion of a lawn into the beginnings of a thriving pollinator habitat garden.
Friday Night Painting Party
The brief was simple: Help us paint a canoe for a pollinator garden. Pick a colour, a paintbrush, and an empty spot on the canoe. Come back and trade it in for a new colour and paintbrush when you’re done. We have room for 1 flower per person, but you can come back later in the evening if you want to paint another one. And people just kept coming, stopping by on their way to and from the main festival acts down the hill, or returning with their kids and hands full of Ras L’Bol streetfood takeaway and to-go beer cups filled with one of 12 on draft beer selections from 5e Baron (sometimes bringing us some which we so appreciated). The steady trickle continued well into the evening, and we ran out of several colours before the night was ended by the sweetest lady who wandered over as we were cleaning up and asked if she could paint one last flower.
We got to talk to so many families on Friday night about our local community roots, our community projects, school and community workshops, with so many wanting to help, and learn more, and get involved. If you were one of them, and didn’t get a chance to, here is the link to our local volunteer group on FB, Pollinate / Polliniser Aylmer.
The Races
On Saturday morning, we helped put on finishing touches, and watched together holding our breath during all three runs of Suzanne and her family’s entry into this year’s Aylmer 500 matchbox races, some more nail biting and utterly terrifying than others. The Monster had a glorious first run, before some technical difficulties caused steering challenges that saw a couple of false starts, as well as a final run that ended in a terrifying crash, where thankfully no one was hurt. What most people don’t know, however, is that Suzanne is an artist, and a landscape architect, but has ABSOLUTELY no mechanical or engineering knowledge or training, and singlehandedly designed and built this car with the help of her 3 boys. Every part of this car was designed, researched and built by her, which I am in awe of.
The Preparation
Our Butterflyway Rangers and Pollinate Aylmer volunteers prepared the plants proudly grown this winter by our volunteer Seed Sitters, all from locally grown and harvested parent plants at our expanding local native seed orchard here in Aylmer North. Together with what has consistently grown into our “Junior Ranger Posse”, comprised of many of our youngest members, woodchips, plants and supplies were loaded and moved to the site earlier in the week.
On Saturday morning, before and during the races, several Pollinate Aylmer members, some old, some new, as well as an unexpected and extremely appreciated brigade from Big Rock Farm came together to edge and prepare the planting site and fill our canoe planter using cardboard, woodchips and additional locally sourced natural materials like branches, hedge trimmings, bagged leaves, farm compost and only the tiniest bit of soil, since that is what we have access to. All of these materials will slowly breakdown over time, while our young seedlings grow, to create a rich, nutrient filled soil for the seedlings to burrow roots into.
The planting party
So many of the families who helped paint the canoe on Friday night returned on Saturday, and the kids, especially, were so eager to help.
They walked the street like a mini gang and collected river rocks (with permission) from 5e Baron, which they they painted and decorated and placed in the new garden.
They chose and planted plants in the canoe, and around it once that was too full, and giggled at the silly names of some of these plants, while they chatted with our volunteers about types of pollinators, why they need help, and some of the simple things they can do in their own yards at home to help them.
In a blur and what felt like the blink of an eye, the canoe and surrounding garden was full, and all the young plants grown and shared forward by our local Seed Sitters have a new, permanent home.
These plants will spend the remainder of this growing season doing just that, growing, especially below ground, where they will establish healthy root systems, prioritizing roots over flowers, for now. If you want to see their progress, return often, visit Aylmer’s vibrant downtown core, and take a few moments to observe the garden as you walk by, and see if you can spot life among its flowers.
I returned yesterday to clean up a little and found this little guy among the woodchips, likely finding the perfect spot to burrow and move in.
It takes a village… Aylmer is ours
None of this would have been possible without our volunteers, and for anyone wondering, here is what preparation and support looked like:
- Old, broken canoe: Anonymous donor last fall, Wychwood
- Garden site: Centre d’Action Bénévoles Access Aylmer
- Invitation, Connection, Organization & Support: Corporation Vieux Aylmer
- Woodchips: Tower Tree Service
- Canoe fill: Big Rock Farm
- Cardboard: Centre Communitaire Entre Nous, Home Hardware Aylmer
- Decorative Rocks: 5e Baron
- Plants: Grown by volunteer ‘Seed Sitters‘ through our Canopee Localeaf Seed Project. Seed Sitters are individuals who participated in our free workshop series last fall and winter, and opted to grow additional seedlings for our community projects
- Plant preparation for fundraiser: Marjorie, Chantel and Sarah
- Canoe artistic direction: Sarah & Celeste
- Moving woodchips: Marjorie, Dana, Allison, Suzanne, Colin, Wojtek, Chantel
- Junior movers: Matisse, Milad, Mikka, Celeste, Esme and Remi
- Friday night volunteers: Marjorie, Kim, Chantel, Robin, Remi, Celeste, Celeste and Scarlett
- Saturday volunteers: Marjorie, Marie, Allison, Suzanne, Chantel, Sarah, Mike, Matt, Ari, Robin, Jeff, Noa, Alex, Bryson, Celeste, Remi, Flora, Winnie, Evelyn and Ivy
- Animators & youth educators: Chantel & Marjorie
Estimated participants, painters, planters outside of the above: 300+
Finally, I don’t know how to thank Marjorie, who reluctantly and nervously agreed to help me pull together this project, and ended up so calmly taking charge and leading it with the confidence of someone who has been doing this forever. Watching your confidence, leadership and knowledge grow exponentially over the past few weeks has been such an honour, and I’ve enjoyed every moment of working so closely with you, as has everyone else who helped make this 16th stop on the #ButterflywayAylmer come to be.
I can’t wait to revisit it next spring and watch the balance of colour start to shift from woodchip brown to living green.
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