Native Plants

THE COMMUNITY CANOE CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN

BOYlJD-CQAERVO9What’s a Community Canoe Garden? As part of the David Suzuki Foundation’s Homegrown National Park Project, our plan is to take old canoes that are no longer seaworthy and repurpose them as bee-friendly garden planters.

The Community Canoe Gardens will be installed in parks along the corridor of the old Garrison Creek. And they will be filled with native flowers that are really good for birds, bees and butterflies. Listen to our interview on CBC’s Metro Morning.

Our Goal

Our goal is to raise $5,000 so we can establish a network of 12 Community Canoe gardens. This money will be used to buy old canoes, plus soil, plants, mulch and other materials.

And we need your help. Not only will you be helping to change the landscape of the city, check out the amazing perks for your generous support!

Why are we doing this?

Well, we love canoes. And not only do they look awesome filled with native plants and flowers, the Community Canoe Garden network will support local bees, butterflies and other pollinators that help ensure our fruits, veggies and herbs are abundant and healthy.

Please join us in this project. Together, we can build the Community Canoe Network.
And please note that the Community Canoe Garden Network is just the beginning. Working with residents, community groups, the city, and local paddling businesses, our grand ambition is to establish Community Canoe as a service similar to bixi bikes, but for canoes. We want to help make it easier for residents to explore Toronto’s waterfront and waterways. Imagine adding a paddle down the Humber or the Don to your commute, or taking a canoe trip along the waterfront!

Please help bring canoes back to the city by showing your support for Community Canoe – a “park service” of the Homegrown National Park.

Warmly,

Ranger Aidan
Homegrown National Park Project

Check out our Facebook and Twitter pages.

Video footage provided by Greg Francis and Marianna Angotti

Lillian Ball: Waterwash ABC

This post comes to you from Cultura21

Lillian Ball works in New York as an environmental artist and activist. She has a multidisciplinary background in anthropology, ethnographic film, and sculpture, which influences her work. Furthermore she has received numerous awards and has traveled widely due to her international exhibitions.

Her latest project Waterwash ABC includes the construction of a wetland park, improvement of habitat as well as increase of public access to Bronx River. Its aim is to filter storm runoff and create consciousness among the community for watershed issues by means of an aesthetic nature experience.  The need for restoration and revitalization of areas challenged by stormwater issues is widespread in waterfront areas worldwide.

The vision of Lilian Ball was a vegetated swale with native plants, permeable pavement, and educational signage explaining the need for non-point source stormwater management in private as well as public places.  The transformation of a neglected space into a public outreach park is supposed to inspire community commitment to stormwater issues.

The runoff from the parking lot and the roof of the ABC Carpet and Home retail facility at 1055 Bronx River Ave was emptied unfiltered into the Bronx River. Ball’s project aims to alter this fact. Rocking the Boat is the fiscal agent for this Bronx River Watershed Initiative in order to construct a wetland habitat that stabilizes the shoreline to detain and filter the outfalls before they enter the river.

Rocking the Boat students will plant a variety of salt-tolerant native species and help the  ABC personnel in planting the community vegetable garden and maintain the site. Above that a hydrologic monitoring will be carried out by Rocking the Boat environmental apprentices.

In that way the project creates a permanent, publicly visible remediation, habitat restoration, and educational site. Above that it acts as a green infrastructure model.
For more information see http://lillianball.com/waterwash/index.html and  www.rockingtheboat.org

Cultura21 is a transversal, translocal network, constituted of an international level grounded in several Cultura21 organizations around the world.

Cultura21′s international network, launched in April 2007, offers the online and offline platform for exchanges and mutual learning among its members.

The activities of Cultura21 at the international level are coordinated by a team representing the different Cultura21 organizations worldwide, and currently constituted of:

– Sacha Kagan (based in Lüneburg, Germany) and Rana Öztürk (based in Berlin, Germany)
– Oleg Koefoed and Kajsa Paludan (both based in Copenhagen, Denmark)
– Hans Dieleman (based in Mexico-City, Mexico)
– Francesca Cozzolino and David Knaute (both based in Paris, France)

Cultura21 is not only an informal network. Its strength and vitality relies upon the activities of several organizations around the world which are sharing the vision and mission of Cultura21

Go to Cultura21

H20 – Preview: Ruth Wallen

This post comes to you from Green Public Art

On May 6, 2011, H20: The Art of Conservation, at the Water Conservation Garden, San Diego, CA, will open to the public. Green Public Art reviewed over 1100 artists portfolios before inviting 14 San Diego artists to participate in the exhibition which offers San Diego homeowners an artistic alternative to incorporate water conservation into their own garden spaces. Green Public Art awarded each artist a mini-grant to develop their site-specific sculptures. In the weeks leading up to the exhibition opening the artist’s concepts will be revealed on this site. Questions? Contact Rebecca Ansert, Curator, Green Public Art at rebecca@greenpublicart.com.

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CONCEPT: Dew Harvesters. San Diego receives less than ten inches of rain a year, with almost no precipitation falling between May and October, but yet many native plants stay green throughout the summer.  This project provides sculptures to harvest dew and/or fog, demonstrating the way that local plants survive during the summer months.  Dew harvesting was practiced in antiquity and is again being explored as populations grow, climates change, and water becomes increasingly scarce. Actual dew harvesters would generally be much larger than the proposed sculptures.  While these sculptures are functional, harvesting a small amount of potable water that could be used to water a garden, they are also meant to raise awareness about the local ecology and the need to regard water as a precious resource.

ABOUT: Ruth Wallen is a multi-media artist whose work is dedicated to encouraging dialogue about ecological and social issues. She has created outdoor interactive “nature walks” at Carmel Mountain, the San Bernardino Children’s Forest and Tijuana River Estuary, and has participated in group exhibitions at the Long Beach Museum of Art and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado. She is a founding member of the multiethnic/national collaborative artist group Las Comadres.  Her work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Light Work, New York. and the Atheneum San Diego. She has published critical essays in journals including LEONARDO, Exposure, High Performance, The Communication Review, and Women’s Studies, as well as two anthologies, With Other Eyes: Race, Gender, and Visual Culture and Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women and Feminism.  She is core faculty in the interdisciplinary arts MFA program at Goddard College, a lecturer at the University of California, San Diego and was a Fulbright lecturer at the Autonomous University of Baja California, Tijuana.  She received her BA from Swarthmore College and her MFA from the University of California, San Diego.

Rebecca Ansert, founder of Green Public Art, is an art consultant who specializes in artist solicitation, artist selection, and public art project management for both private and public agencies. She is a graduate of the master’s degree program in Public Art Studies at the University of Southern California and has a unique interest in how art can demonstrate green processes or utilize green design theories and techniques in LEED certified buildings.

Green Public Art is a Los Angeles-based consultancy that was founded in 2009 in an effort to advance the conversation of public art’s role in green building. The consultancy specializes in public art project development and management, artist solicitation and selection, creative community involvement and knowledge of LEED building requirements. Green Public Art also works with emerging and mid-career studio artists to demystify the public art process. The consultancy acts as a resource for artists to receive one-on-one consultation before, during, and after applying for a public art project.

Go to Green Public Art