by Kathleen Stewart, Rick Wierzbicki, Shari Pitka
The Landscaping 101 session presentation by our ELM coordinator on March 22 at the Edgemont Community Centre was a huge success and we were very pleased to see an excellent turnout of close to forty keen gardeners. Shari had prepared an impressive handout for the attendees to follow along, discussing topics like:
• Know Your Planting Zone
• Soil and Amendments
• Preparing Your Garden
• Trees Shrubs and Perennials
• Design 101
The handout also contained several suggestions for perennials, shrubs, and trees that tend to thrive in Calgary. If you were unable to attend this event and are interested in receiving a copy of the handout, please contact ELM at [email protected], as we may still have some extra copies at the office. Shari answered many questions from the attendees while we also had some great input from several people in the audience.
At this time, the long term forecast hints at a spring that will be slow to arrive. Hopefully, there will be some stretches of clement weather allowing us to start on a long list of ELM projects for the Edgemont area including cleaning up tree wells; pocket gopher control; aerating and potentially fertilizing some park areas; moving around some pots for safety reasons or due to damage; trimming and weeding of park areas etc. Incidentally, cleanup of medians is dependent on the timing of spring street sweeping by the city. If this happens late again, as it did last year, cleanup of the medians has to wait, as there will be too much gravel on the medians, potentially damaging mowers etc. Accordingly, the medians may look a little neglected until street sweeping is completed. As of March 31, the schedule was not finalized by the city. However, in all likelihood, streets in Edgemont will be cleaned around the same time as last year which was the first week of June. You can sign up for street sweeping alerts through www.calgary.ca to make sure your vehicle is off the street when street cleaning is scheduled for your area.
Apart from routine projects, we are really excited that one of the first items on the list will be to start planting the perennials donated so generously by Edgemont residents (and others). With the assistance of our new landscaping contractor, Foothills Landscaping, the perennials should be in place by the time we start planting annuals! Weather dependent once more, we hope to start planting annuals in parks and pots during the first half of June!
There are no updates at this time regarding the naturalization of the slope near the Fire Hall; this pilot project is still ongoing, and our ELM coordinator is in contact with the city’s naturalization expert. We will publish updates when we have developments to report.
Click here to the Eau Claire Community News home page for the latest Eau Claire community updates.
