By Sandra McCance, Friends of Lemoine Nursery Coordinator
This summer and fall were very busy and innovative times at our Nursery. Our dedicated team of volunteers (which grew a little over the season) have worked very hard to nurture, plant and sell our stock of native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. Come rain, shine, wind, and sleet you can find us working every Wednesday morning from 9 – noon (and sometimes the keeners put in extra hours)!
We also successfully grew our own wildflowers from collected seeds. Through two enjoyable winter workshops we created mini greenhouses and planted the seeds while the ground was still snow covered.
Mother Nature took care of them until spring arrived when we transplanted the tiny, determined seedlings into larger trays in our Hoop House. The project was an amazing and rewarding success!
A recurring winter activity was to harvest hardwood cuttings from various shrubs and trees to root them for our stock. As with most gardening efforts, success can be limited but rewarding!
Most exciting for our Nursery team was approval from the Cataraqui Conservation Full Authority Board to build a new (much needed) wooden storage shed (using nursery funding). We have long outgrown our small, dilapidated metal shed and this new facility will allow us to better store less-used tools, our ride-on mower, rolls of landscape cloth, burlap, fencing etc. The project entails moving and rejuvenating our existing (and decaying) wooden compost bins and pouring a concrete pad with construction to begin spring 2025.
We recently bid farewell to our large, central hybrid poplar tree as falling branches were becoming a hazard to both people and plants. Ever keen on the principle of re-use, we used some of the larger branches to enclose our Demonstration Garden found outside the Nursery gate and shown in the picture below.
Two wonderful education sessions were held for our team this summer, and we plan to keep up providing opportunities to learn. First, a presentation by Cataraqui Conservation staff updated us on studies being done on invasive plants found within the Conservation watershed. A second, delicious occasion was a presentation on pawpaw trees by community member Bruce Bursey. Bruce not only informed us about this native, but not well known, fruit tree, but also donated seeds for us to start our own stock, let us sample his homegrown fruit and even prepared scrumptious home-made pawpaw ice cream! We look forward to continuing this collaboration and producing our own trees for planting at Lemoine Point and selling to the community.
Recently we planted four small white pine trees (picture below) at Lemoine Point near the beach on Collins Bay. The trees were planted in memory of two of our wonderful volunteers and leaders, Jane Murphy and Peter Butler. Their legacy will live on in the place they knew and loved.
As we wind down for the season and put our plants to bed for the winter, we are already excited about continuing indoor projects during the winter and regeneration for both our plants and people in the spring.