Little Forests Kingston

Why are these people hanging out with logs? They’re some of the crew of fabulous folks that Sandra organized, along with their 7 vans, and one truck, to haul a massive amount of wood from a large popular that was dying and had to be cut down. The stump team transported them to Little Forest sites to become sitting circles, kids play structures, hugel material, and habitat for bees, ants, and more. Fabulous work everyone! If you hear of any other stumps looking for a home, let us know. Check out Sandra’s Facebook post.

Meeting this week cancelled

Long weekend and too much planting happening. Strawberries. Vegetables. Fruit trees. Perennials. Herbs. Seeds. Enjoy the long weekend and see you at our next meeting Saturday June 4th.

Little Forests happenings

Vote for Sweetgrass Circle pitch to McDougall Family Fund: Starting at midnight tonight, you can vote once a day for Little Forests Kingston pitch until May 31. The entry with the most votes wins $5000! Share the link to the Sweetgrass Circle’s McDougall Family Fund pitch widely with your social network and ask them to vote each day!

Mapping the keyline: Thanks to Bob Chalmers, a permaculture expert from Edible Forest Farms, for mapping out the keyline at HWY 15 last week. We’re going to use the keyline to help us channel water into a couple of ponds.

Kingstonist spreads the word about Little Forests: Thanks Sweet Grass Circle for all the awesome work you’ve been doing to raise money and awareness for the Little Forests!

Awesome Kingston Pitch goes to A Clean Start: Sweetgrass Circle pitched multilingual signage for Little Forests at the Awesome Kingston Pitch Party last night. They did an Awesome job, but the $1000 went to another awesome project A Clean Start @thelaundrykit which aims to offer free laundry services to people struggling with homelessness and other neighbours in need around KFL&A. As I listened to their pitch (City is requiring they clean the greywater before dumping it into the sewer) I immediately started thinking about how wonderful it would be to channel that water instead into a Little Forest or a rain garden. Mark da Silva is going to look into it.

Champlain Park/KSS site delayed: The City of Kingston & the LDSB need another year to get an agreement in place for planting at Champlain Park. The trees from the Champlain Park Little Forest will go instead to HWY 15 site, allowing for an intimate sitting circle in the upland Little Forest. This may be a blessing in disguise as we’ve learned that the soil is very shallow at Champlain Park and a different forest may be more appropriate, one that does well on very shallow soils. Ecosites of Ontario is a fabulous resource for helping us choose the right species based on ecosite. Perhaps the “Very Shallow, Dry to Fresh: Oak Hardwood” ecosite mix might be a good match? They designed a matrix to help understand a site and match it to an ecosite. This Ecosite Matrix which captures the important elements from the Ecosites document may be a great tool in helping plan future Little Forests.

Nursery at Lakeside: Our Beaked Hazelnuts, Golden Currants, and Buffaloberries seedlings have arrived. The teeny tiny bareroot plants are now hanging out for the summer at a Nursery we’ve established at Lakeside. Thanks Hannah & Jane for preparing & planting the nursery! Anybody up for making a sign?

Inspiration from around the web

LIttle Forests as future seed orchards? In Ecoman’s writeup of the Reference 2019 Natural City conference he summarizes Stefan Weber of St. Williams Nursery seed orchards that act as pollinator gardens, seed production, and green business. They also reduce the impact on remnant populations in the wild and preserve source identified seed and genetic diversity. A few cities in Ontario now have seed strategies. Weber helped develop the one for Hamilton. Once we have the Little Forests planted, is a future project collaborating with other groups such as the Land Conservancy, KASSI, and CRCA on a Seed Strategy for Kingston?

zshaashaagopemaagaatig Ojibwe plant taxonomy: This Ojibwe Plant Taxonomy study at Lac Seul First Nation is an interesting read. One of the plant names that jumped out at me was Mountain Maple, Acer spicatum, which FGCA says is common in our area. The Ojibwe name zshaashaagopemaagaatig (n) chewing wood (shrub) and zshaashaagopemigoon (v) ‘chewed upon this wood has been’ sparked me to google medicinal uses. We don’t have this lovely maple in our species list, maybe we can source a few or add it to our list for a future Little Forest.

A biologist believes that trees speak a language we can learn: “Because they are not mobile, to thrive [trees] must know their particular locus on the Earth far better than any wandering animal.” David Haskell, author of Songs of Trees, says connection in a network necessitates communication and breeds languages. He shares the story of the Waorani’s relationship with trees and suggests that the lesson city-dwellers [settlers] should take from the Waorani is that “dogmas of separation fragment the community of life; they wall humans in a lonely room. We must ask the question: ‘can we find an ethic of full earthly belonging?’”