Bob Hunter Memorial Park

This morning I hosted a great Greening Your Grounds workshop all about incorporating rain gardens and dry riverbeds into our urban yards. We've been running a workshop series at the Markham Museum this spring. Since I was already up north, I decided to stop by the Bob Hunter Memorial Park. Last year, I worked for the organization that was contracted to restore the tallgrass prairie ecosystem in this area. I'd been there, on a site visit, once in the past and I'd been meaning to go see what was coming up this year. 

Bob Hunter Memorial Park has a really great multi-purpose trail system. There is a parking lot just south of 14th Avenue with a large park map. I hiked through the tallgrass prairie trail and did a little exploring around some of the areas that are currently undergoing restoration. The park is mainly old agricultural land that has been added to the Rouge Park system over the past several years. Areas are at various states of restoration, construction, and there are several non-native species found throughout the park. This is a great example of  multi-year restoration project that is going to be a gem of a park after it sees a decade of management and growth to establish.

Throughout the park there are some wide-open views. A lot of the restoration has been early-succession wetlands, meadows, and prairies.

A water control structure ensuring that water levels will be maintained in the higher elevation wetland and slowly drain into the lower wetland. This helps slow the flow of water through the system, reducing erosion and allowing the water to slowly infiltrate into the groundwater system once it has filtered through the wetlands.

The only other trail user I came across. A big garter snake trying to warm up on the gravel trail on this chilly day. I really like this reference guide created by Sciensational Sssnakes to learn about snakes in Ontario.

For the past several years I've been working in ecosystems that have a small percentage of tree cover (alvars and tallgrass prairie). I'm a little rusty on my tree and shrub ID, so I've been trying to work on it. Today I discovered some nannyberry with flower buds that are about to pop. This would be a great native shrub to add to a yard.

I also came across some wild Canada columbine in bloom.

Some milkweed! The best thing you can do for the Monarch butterfly populations is add one of our several species of native milkweed to your garden. They are really cool plants and really easy to get started.

At one of the lookouts, I came across a swath of prairie smoke in bloom. I love seeing these little wispy flowers in the spring. I also caught one of our tiny solitary bees in action! These species of bees are some of the most important pollinator species in Ontario.

Strawberries!

A look out over last year's stems in the restored tallgrass prairie.

I took a closer look and those stems were mostly Indian grass and Canada wild rye. I wanted to see some big bluestem, but I couldn't pick any out. A few of the rye seeds were still hanging on.

And all sorts of the composite flowers were still standing. The seeds have all been eaten by the birds over the winter.

 

Throughout the park there any many interpretive signs. I found one about Bob Hunter, the park's namesake. From the sign I learned that Bob was a politician, author, journalist, and environmental activist. He wrote many books and contributed to the Vancouver Sun. He was aboard the first Greenpeace ship that sailed from Vancouver to Alaska to protest U.S. nuclear weapons testing in the northern waters and went on to serve as the President of Greenpeace. I think that this is part of a really interesting story and I'm glad that we have places like this park to commemorate the tireless work of people like Bob Hunter.

Today's hike was a good one and I'm looking forward to stopping in at the park to see which species come up throughout the seasons.