In honour of Truth & Reconciliation Day, 12 local volunteers gathered today to plant 90 native plants along the Red Alder Trail in South Vancouver.
We consider our Free the Fern stewardship effort to be an act of healing and reconciliation, replacing colonial invasive species with Indigenous plant species that are native to the area. Many of these plants were traditionally harvested for food, medicine, and basket weaving.
Today we planted: salmonberry, Pacific bleeding heart, vine maple, western red cedar, bitter cherry, mock orange, common camas, goldenrod, woolly sunflower, blanket flower, and Douglas Iris.
The plants were donated by the City of Vancouver Green Streets Program & purchased at the native plant fudraiser hosted by Echo Ecological.
We will also be hosting a Healing Forest Planting along the trail on Sat, Oct 19, 10am-12pm. Come join us! You can sign up to participate on our event page. Elder in Residence, Marge Wylie, of the Tl’azt’en Nation will be sharing bannock & jam and the Coastal Wolf pack will be blessing us with their drumming & dancing.
Thanks to our amazing volunteers who came out to help with planting today: Barbara, Catherine, Connor, Ellie, Erin, Grace, Jeannine, Kiki, Liam, Wendy, Westley, and more!