in Chatsworth, Grey Highlands, Southgate, West Grey
March 21, 2024
BY JOHN BUTLER — For the last two years, groups of volunteers have been busy in South Grey "protecting our own" — working to ensure that plants that have grown and evolved here for millions of years do not lose out in their battle to survive in the face of invasive species allowed to thrive here through human activity. The volunteers do this important work through the Grey Bruce Native Seed Bank, a not-for-profit social enterprise that provides a seed bank of sustainably-collected and locally-sourced seed from Grey and Bruce counties. The Seed Bank aims to produce large quantities of seeds to supply large restoration projects in the area. The seed bank will be home to an immense amount of genetic diversity and its seed will be used by conservation authorities, government agencies, non-government organizations and restoration companies to give our native plants and their ecosystems a fighting chance.
South Grey News spoke recently to Charly Baxter, one of the volunteers who give the Seed Bank a fighting chance to make our communities better. Raised in Meaford, Charly is a horticultural technician, trained in her trade at Toronto's Humber College. She is also a practicing artist in paint and ceramics, and a graduate of the OCAD (Ontario College of Art & Design) University in Toronto.
A steering committee (usually between three and five members) oversees the Seed Bank's administrative work. Landscape designer and botanist Claire Ellenwood is President, retired teacher and climate activist Rob Spackman is Treasurer (and has donated money to help it) and Charly Baxter is Secretary (Charly is also responsible for outreach and communications.) Charly points out that the energetic core of the Seed Bank's activities is its Stewardship Group of volunteers who meet weekly except for the winter months, to plan and carry out Seed Bank activities, augmented by more volunteers when necessary.
While Charly speaks highly of all the volunteer founders and activists in the Seed Bank, she points out that Claire Ellenwood played a pivotal role, and still does. Like Charly, Claire has an arts background — she has a degree in fine arts from York University. Claire also studied landscape design at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) and ecosystem restoration at Niagara College. She owns and operates Ontario Flora, a consulting company and native plant nursery in the Beaver Valley — a company dedicated to civic activity as well as commercial activity across the community and beyond. Says Charly, “Claire and Ontario Flora staff have provided an immense amount of guidance, education, time and materials to start and maintain the Seed Bank.” In addition to the Seed Bank, one recent civic activity in which Claire plays a lead role is landscape design and implementation for the leafy but weedy plot of land on which the Eugenia war memorial sits, adjacent to Eugenia Falls. Claire points out that human exploitation of the landscape often gives non-native plant species an opportunity to colonize land once the domain of our native species. These "natives", for thousands or millions of years, developed to fill niches in our highly local ecosystems that the invaders don't play — so a native species in trouble amounts to an ecosystem in trouble. Disturbed land from plowed fields and road and residential construction provides ample opportunity for opportunistic invasive plants to out-spread native species, and many species we see by the roadside are not native at all. "To take something out that isn't great for the environment, you need to put a native back in its place or else more invasives come into the open soil," says Claire.
When asked why two Seed Bank leaders — herself and Claire — both had backgrounds that mixed horticulture and art, Charly replied, “The link between the artistic component and the restorative horticultural component is the acknowledgment of the interconnectedness between humans and the Earth — a connection crucial to the health of both humans and the planet. In focusing on and attempting to capture the beauty of the environment, I couldn't avoid the destruction.”
The Seed Bank received some start-up money — the donation of the proceeds of the sale of local garlic, Sideroad Farm's community crop — and has received small but crucial donations from supporters. It also recently made a grant application and has attracted the volunteer services of Kate Russell, an acclaimed local expert on grant acquisition. Charly points out that more volunteers are still needed in the areas of marketing and communications, funding and grants, volunteer coordination, seed orchard stewardship, and equipment and material sourcing. From the casual but crucial volunteer, to the person who can give hours each week to the work — the Seed Bank can offer rewarding activities to volunteers at all levels, says Charly.
A small and dedicated group of volunteers had begun gathering seeds in the fall of 2022, most of which were planted at Ontario Flora. It was in January of 2023 that the group achieved incorporation as the not-for-profit Grey Bruce Native Seed Bank. In October 2023, the Seed Bank held three afternoon seed-gathering events at the Grey County Rail Trail, the Bruce Trail near Kolapore and the Kimberley Forest. Each event attracted about 15 volunteer harvesters. These seeds were sustainably collected, meaning than no more than 10% of the seeds of any one species in a given area were collected. Seeds from about five species were garnered at each site. This collection was augmented by sustainable collections by members of the Stewardship Group, resulting in a collection of 32 species in 2023. The most common species collected so far are Common Milkweed, Fireweed, Grass Leaved Goldenrod, Indian Hemp, Swamp Aster, Thimbleweed and Little Bluestem.
On the afternoon of February 10 2024, a group of 23 volunteers gathered at the Flesherton Library to sort and clean the seeds that had been gathered the previous fall. The seeds were separated from their pods and stalks and from other chaff that inevitably results from seed-gathering, and were sorted and stored by species.
Some species were planted in a "seed orchard" provided to the Seed Bank on Ontario Flora's grounds — seeds that needed more expert planting and propagation. Other seeds were reserved for planting in a 4.4 acre seed orchard (a meadow habitat) near Duncan, on uplands near the eastern rim of the Beaver Valley. This acreage, owned by the Bruce Trail Conservancy and lent to the Seed Bank for free, is on what is called the Pinnacle Rock property. The orchard acreage, which formerly grew soybeans, can be expanded in future to a ten acre seed orchard. The field was tilled last fall in preparation for late winter-early spring planting.
Three half-day "planting bees" were held recently at the Duncan seed orchard on weekends between March 2 and March 16 this year, attracting more than a dozen volunteer seed-planters each time. Some of the seeds sorted in February were hand-planted in rows: others were scattered over several plots, each twenty feet by twenty feet. A cover crop of oats will also be planted in the orchard to retain the earth's moisture, improve soil structure and inhibit the growth of unwanted weeds. Not all the Seed Bank's collected seeds were planted at these events: some will be planted later in the spring, and others will be raised in seed trays and transplanted in the fall. The Seed Bank is putting together a group of dedicated volunteers to care for the seed orchard while it produces its crop of native plants.
Why plant some seeds in what are, after all, winter conditions? For some species, seed dormancy is overcome by the seed spending time in the ground through a winter period and having its hard seed coat softened by frost and weathering – the cold moist period triggers the seed's embryo, and its growth and expansion eventually break through the softened seed coat in search of sun and nutrients. In submitting a cold-weather planting photo for this article, Charly said, "If I could fast forward time I would include a picture of the Duncan seed orchard in full bloom. It's going to be beautiful!”
The Grey Bruce Seed Bank is not alone in its pursuit of native plant propagation: similar grassroots groups are re-wilding across Canada. In Ontario, under the auspices of Carolinian Canada (a network of leaders growing healthy landscapes in southern Ontario), a collective has been formed to strategize ways to help preserve native plants and their seeds in southern Ontario. The draft strategy will be completed by early this year.
Bolstered by this strategy and by its own work, the Seed Bank will in future be able to supply seeds to major landscape restoration projects. But what about small scale projects — the homeowner or tenant who wants to plant and tend native species? Charly says the seed bank may have a role to play in serving these projects in the future, but she points out that several local sustainable plant nurseries can provide seeds, plants and advice to the gardener wishing to re-create a small but truly local ecosystem.
To engage its community and increase awareness and knowledge, the Seed Bank collaborates with like-minded groups to provide events with educational components. For example, in 2023 it made a presentation on the importance of native plants for native pollinators, which it followed with a hands-on work bee event preparing the land.
When asked why native plant horticulture is so important to her, Charly said the connection between natural ecosystems and human endeavours has always interested her: just as we can destroy ecosystems, so can we can help them heal. “When we care for the environment we care for ourselves” she says. She also credits several childhood experiences with sensitizing her to growing things. Her mother had an exemplary flower garden, her grandparents had a large vegetable garden, and as a Grade Three student, she entered a sunflower growing contest — and she won. The prize was a pizza party for her class (ample evidence of the power of celebratory pizza to shape one's life trajectory).
For more information on volunteer opportunities with the Seed Bank, or more information on its activities, contact Charly Baxter at greybrucenativeseedbank@gmail.com or visit the Grey Bruce Native Seed Bank's Facebook page.
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