Hello everyone!

Happy Baashkaakodin Giizis (Freezing moon)! This is a time of year when the Earth and nature are preparing for the winter, and the Baashkaakodin Giizis reminds us to prepare ourselves spiritually for the months ahead.

Upcoming events:

‘Mini’ Seedy Saturday: November 23rd, 10 am - 2pm at Cooke’s United Church
Swap or buy seeds, attend workshops, and enjoy a hot drink! There also will be music, and all are welcome to join in. Organised by KASSI.

Reimagining Lawns: November 19th, 6 - 7:30 pm at KFPL Central Branch
Learn about how we can grow biodiverse lawns by gifting Pocket Forests, Pocket Meadows, and Living Lawns to the Earth! First come first serve.

Planting Recap: Fall 2024

From October 12th to 20th, we planted around 2,000 native trees and shrubs at three different locations in our city! We were amazed at the dedication and hard work that all of our volunteers put in to make this happen - thank you all so much! We couldn’t have done it without you. And a huge shout out to Nathan and Susie, our site champions who organised the planting days!

At the Hidden River Little Forest, which is growing at 111 Van Order Drive, we planted 900 native trees and shrubs. Our first planting day was on October 12th, and despite it landing on Thanksgiving weekend, we had a great turnout and planted half of the forest in just a few hours! We also loosened the soil for the other half of the forest, which was planted a few days later by students from J.R. Henderson, Katarokwi Learning Centre, and Calvin Park.

We were really excited about how many new people helped us plant this Forest, and how keen everyone was to learn about the trees! One of the highlights was seeing the students from the Katarokwi Learning Centre learn how to plant when they arrived in the morning, and then teaching the students from Calvin Park how to do it when they arrived later in the day. They also mentioned that they would like to be involved in stewarding the forest, which is so exciting!

At the Firefly Garden and Forest, which is growing in the courtyard of the Kingston Frontenac Public Library’s central branch, we planted 100 native trees and shrubs! We had a class from King’s Town School help us with this endeavour. This planting was a unique one, because the space in the courtyard was quite limited, and the soil conditions were also difficult to work with. To help solve this problem, we used cover cropping with an annual rye and red clover - stay tuned for an article on that in the future!

We also decided to plant the trees and shrubs as five pocket forests, rather than as one continuous Little Forest, and about 60 different species of plants were included! In the future, we are planning to plant four pocket meadows as well. We’re looking forward to seeing all of the people in the library and in the surrounding buildings looking out onto the trees, shrubs, grasses, and wildlife that will soon be thriving at the Firefly Garden and Forest!

We are super grateful to the Kingston Frontenac Housing Corporation (KFHC) for collaborating with us on these two forests, and we hope to work with them again in the future!

Last but certainly not least, we planted 1,000 trees and shrubs at the Grenville Park Little Forest! Despite the large number of plants, we managed to get all of them in the ground in record time, thanks to the help of 40+ volunteers who came to pitch in! It was an amazing event and we are so grateful to our amazing community for joining us.

There were also over 100 students from eight different classes at Madeleine-de-Roybon that came during the week to help with the planting! Many classes were so enthusiastic that they wanted to come again in the same week. It was lovely to see how committed and interested the school was as well; one class had a tight timeframe for their visit to the Forest, but the teacher decided to make a phone call to the principal, and in the end they were able to stay for a few hours longer!

I spoke to both Susie and Nathan and they both shared a similar sentiment - they were worried that we wouldn’t be able to get all the plants planted in time. But, thanks to you, we made it happen!

We’d also like to thank Green Communities Canada, the Beacon Design Collective, Canadian Trees for Life, and the Grenville Park Cooperative Housing Association for supporting these projects! We are so glad that we’ve had the opportunity to partner with these great organisations, and we hope they will continue to support our projects in the future.

Our 2024 Pocket Forests are settling in for winter

The leaves are on the ground, the days are getting shorter and cooler, and the planting season has come to an end for another year. Now is the time to reflect on the previous season, figure out what worked and what can be improved, and plan for next year.

Our Pocket Forest program, where we work with homeowners to plant native trees and shrubs as gifts to the Earth, had a wonderful first season! Between May and October 2024, we planted a total of 800 trees and shrubs (428 trees and 372 shrubs) at 30 homes across the city as well as two in the naturalised areas of Lawrence and Meadowbrook parks

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You can read Claire’s full article about why and where people are planting Pocket Forests on our website! https://littleforests.org/blogs/pocket-forests/pocket-forests

And if you’d like to know more about the Lawrence and Meadowbrook parks, check out Joyce’s full report in the 1000 Islands Master Gardeners newsletter! https://us19.campaign-archive.com/?u=ef75ac4d93b8ce06d326b65d5&id=72d10437e6

We’re now on Instagram! You can find us at instagram.com/littleforestskingston/.