TNS Leaside Park now has a Facebook Page. We will use that page to announce events and update people if stewardship sessions have to be cancelled (for bad weather or other reasons). TNS Leaside Park Facebook Page.

We received approval to plant native plants on our site for the 224 season. We have already planted a lot of native species, mostly from Native Plants in Claremont. Some of them have even started to bloom!

TNS Leaside Park has also been approved for an extension to the east, which addded a beautiful level area of old forest and almost double the site’s size!

Images of the TNS Leaside Park Extension, 2024

We have resumed weekly Tuesday evening stewardship sessions, from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm.

If you are looking for some fresh air, exercise, and a chance to meet some of your neighbours doing good work, please join TNS and TYNO in restoring Leaside Park’s natural beauty.

Email johnpoyston@gmail.com to be added to our mailing list to keep updated.

STEWARDSHIP SESSIONS:

Starting 5:30 pm on Tuesday April 30th going through to October

These dates may be cancelled if there is a forecast of heavy rain, thunderstorms, or a heat alert warning. I will send out an email before 2 p.m. on the stewardship days.

What will we be doing?

As always, this will depend on the weather and on which invasive species need to be controlled most urgently. 

In spring, we removed a lot of burdock, but the smaller plants we left behind now need to be removed.

We have pruned back a lot of buckthorn, but there is still quite a bit left, which needs removing.

We must persist with removing dog-strangling vines, particularly in preventing them from releasing seeds.

In the fall, we may be able to collect seeds that we could grow over winter. Hopefully, we will be allowed to plant in the spring of 2024.

TNS Leaside Park has received a grant from the Invasive Species Action Fund. This has enabled us to buy a cart, several “Extractigators,” gloves, trowels, pruners and other equipment.

From April to August of 2023, TNS Leaside Park volunteers have removed  21.5 bags of garbage and 55 bags of invasive species (mostly buckthorn and DSV, but also burdock, wood avens, garlic mustard and creeping bellflower) from the site.

The total hours worked on site is 158.5.

It would be great if some volunteers were interested in taking the Lead Steward training course over the winter. This is an excellent program that is partly online and partly in person. It is very practical, teaching everything you need to know about managing a stewardship site. It is interesting, engaging and not very time-consuming.

If we were able to recruit more volunteers, we could look at asking for permission to extend our site further to the east.

For more information:

TNS Leaside Park Facebook Page.

TNS website: https://torontonaturestewards.org/

TNS Leaside Park Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/tnsleasidepark/

What grows at Leaside Park? Find out on our iNaturalist Project page at https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/tns-leaside-park. Feel free to add your own observations using the iNaturalist smartphone app!

E-mail: JohnPOyston@gmail.com

Thank you for your interest in helping TNS restore Leaside Park’s natural beauty!