Today, on Sat, Sept 6, 2025, 10am-12pm, we held our first Invasive Pull after our summer break. We had a great turn out with 22 volunteers (ranging in age from 2 to 72), helping at our event. 10 were volunteering with us for the first time! It was great to be able to learn and connect as a community.
Free the Fern Executive Director, Grace, and board director, Robin, were co-leading the event together. After a nice stretch in the Douglas Fir Teaching Garden, we divided and conquired, with Robin heading to our Community Food Forest and Grace leading volunteers to East of the forest playground.
Team Robin was focused on removing invasive bindweed that was climbing and choking out our berry shrubs in the food forest. While, Team Grace was focused on digging out larger Himalayan blackberry canes and removing periwinkle groundcover. All together, we managed to clear 770 L of invasive species from the trails!
We also took a break to connect over snacks, juice and tea.
We were honoured to welcome Green Party of Vancouver candidate, Annette Rielly, along with her husband and 2 year old daugher to the event.
In addition, we partnered with Curiko for the first time. Curiko was founded when three disablitiy service providers and one social design organization came together to ask: What is the lived experience of social islation, especially for people with developmental disablities? Curiko has created an online event platform to allow all members of the community to connect and learn. At Free the Fern we believe that everyone should have access to connect with nature and community! Nature is for Everyone!
We look forward to our next Invasive Pull on Sat, Oct 4, and our upcoming Nature is for Everyone Planting, where we will be restoring hundreds of native plants to the trail.
We need up to 50 volunteers to help us out at our planting! So, please sign up on our event page.
Thank you to our amazing volunteers who helped at our Invasive Pull today: Annette, Barbara, Bella, Connie, Do, Dylan, Eloise, Gary, Genevieve, Grace, Greg, Haley, Jan, Jeannine, Jennifer, Kristin, Mele, Robin, Samantha, Sung, Tanya, and Veronika.
We are grateful to Habitat Conservation Trust for providing funding to make this event possible.