The Greater Victoria Green Team spent the day engaging 35 community members at the lovely Ocean View Park! This is the second time the Green Team has visited this location this summer.

We primarily removed English Ivy, Daphne, and English Holly. These invasive species have been crowding out the native plants in this forest, and harming the natural ecosystem in the process. Plants like Daphne and Holly take up space and shade out native seedlings that are trying to grow, and English ivy can smother entire trees! By cutting a section of ivy off the bottom of the tree, all the ivy above that point will die, and the tree will be safe. We also cleared 1m of ivy around the tree to ensure that it will not grow back any time soon. We also cut back Daphne and Holly, removing their roots wherever we could to prevent them from re-sprouting later.

Some of the native species we saw in the area were Trailing Blackberry, Sword Fern, and Oregon Grape—these species will now have more space to grow and the forest will be in balance again!

THANK YOU

Thank-you to everyone for participating: Ian, Abigail, Amanda, Kiera, Jason, Beatrice, Alonso, Tomoka, Hayul, Naia, Araliya, Judie, Toni, Julia, Trini, Gary, Houtian, Hong, David, Akari, Jason, Chloe, Julien, Mark, Teresa, Kaitlin, Thadd, Jason, Sacha, Owen, Tyson, Charlie, and Stephanie!

Thank-you very much to the City of Colwood for partnering with us and contributing to our Green Team activities, and for recognizing the importance of collaboration in community engagement and ecological restoration!

Group Photo!

Highlights

• In total 35 community members participated and contributed to 99 volunteer hours!
• 30 volunteers were introduced to Ocean View Park, while 14 volunteers had never removed invasive species before!
• We removed 8 cubic metres of invasive plants and revitalized about 540 square metres of forest!
• Many of our volunteers today learned about how ivy weakens and damages trees (and buildings too)

Before and After Photos

This activity not only benefitted the environment, but also the participants themselves. By being out in nature doing something positive as a team, our community members:

• Develop a sense of belonging to community and place
• Have improved mental and physical health
• Connect to nature, which leads to environmentally responsible behaviour
• Learn about local environmental issues and actions they can take
• Learn the value of bringing together people to work towards a common goal
• Become leaders in their communities
• Increase confidence, resilience and perseverance

Action Shots

Thank you to Lush, Nature Bee Clean, Level Ground Coffee, TruEarth, Green Beaver, Earth Rated, & Ed’s Soup Shack for donating in-kind gifts for our hard-working volunteers to take home!