Mother nature got a helping hand this past weekend from our Eco Steward volunteers. Thanks to funding from the Vancouver Foundation’s Greenest City Community Grant, SPES continues to target invasive plants in the Park’s blowdown sites (opened up by the massive 2006 windstorm). Not only are the plants removed, but with the help of environmental artist Sharon Kallis, we are repurposing them into functional eco-products!
The vines of the invasive Himalayan blackberries pulled from the blowdown sites are being woven into wattle fencing to keep Park visitors and bikes out of sensitive riparian sites suffering erosion from heavy traffic. Eco Steward volunteers wove over 80 feet of fencing along the exposed banks of North Creek this past weekend.
English ivy – also pulled from blowdown sites – is repurposed into netting for erosion control in the Park. Netting will be laid over the same site along North Creek later this fall when native plants will be introduced here to stabilize the bare slopes. The organic netting holds the soil in place while the plants take root, then decomposes away as the plants gain hold.
