Seedlings Seeking Good Homes

Jul 7
3 min read

Garden White butterfly

A month to the day since the We Are All Water Protectors Gathering, and Noojimo’iwewin

Gitigaan is filled with changes, as it is with gardens, always. The hot days followed by a full day of rain made a morning of work on our corner full of the pleasures of adding to beds already diverse with indigenous perennials and observing insects and other signs of animal life.

Thank you to Toronto Nature Stewards for sharing plants from your greenhouse with us. Some bossy and bullying Canada goldenrod had elbowed out our evening primroses in the original Children’s Garden, so we removed a large clump to make way for your new seedlings. We’ll be watching closely for encroachment as the summer unfolds, as there’s lots of Canada anemone waiting to push in from the other side.

Last fall’s removal of creeping Charlie, bellflower, and common daylilies—all on the Ontario

“invasive species” list—left space for a planting of stiff goldenrod close to the Hippo School wall. We hope this tall plant will compete well with the sunchokes, golden alexander, comfrey, Canada goldenrod, virginia aster, wild phlox, and Canada anemone that fills this bed, along with a red elderberry being much used by leafcutter bees to line their nests.

The Full Moon and adjacent Half Moon Rain Gardens and Entranceway Gardens also got a

makeover, as golden alexander had begun to dominate, reducing the growth of wild columbine, hairy beardtongue, joe pye weed, and swamp milkweed. We added a few evening primroses here, as well as white avens, including south of a brushpile where pollinators such as mourning cloak butterflies overwinter.

What to do with the extra golden alexander? Why not try some out in some of the worst soils in the garden, since these hardy plants seem to tolerate just about anything? Gifts of big bluestem grasses were similarly transplanted to tough spots along the Rushton Road sidewalk. These tall, clumping perennials prefer poor soil.

Three butterflies visited, but neither the monarch nor the comma (or was it a question mark?), stayed for a photoshoot. The garden white in the Butterfly and Berry Garden in the laneway was happy to preen for the camera, however. The carpenter ants that have returned to the aging linden, marched on, so piles of fresh sawdust are growing fast around the base of the tree. Perhaps we will see the hermit beetles back as well, such company as trees keep.

Whomever is feasting on unripened elderberry umbrels and leaves as well as heritage bean

seedlings left only the evidence of their presence. This is a mystery the Crew would like to

solve. Birds? Beetles? Cutworms? Time to transplant marigolds, or perhaps a diluted dish soap spray to protect the elderberries.

The Noojimo’iwewin Gitigaan Crew can’t claim to be rewilding Toronto in the same way as the Nature Stewards, but we are equally passionate about “building urban ecosystems that are self sustaining.” We are grateful for the developing relationship between our groups, from meet ups by chance and at events, to exhibitor space at the Gathering, to this gift of seedlings seeking good homes.

See also James B. Nardi, The Hidden Company that Trees Keep: Life from Treetops to Root

Tips (Princeton UP, 2023).