Portage Park December 8, 2018

The Greater Victoria Green Team and Volunteer View Royal removed an assortment of invasive plants including English Ivy, English Holly and Daphne from the forested park in View Royal, Portage Park. This activity marked the last GV Green Team volunteer activity of 2018! What an amazing way to end a great year! 

Thank-you to everyone who participated: Alan, Alisa, Beth, Bethany, Clark, Connie, David, John, Linh, Marc, Marjorie, Monika, Patrick, Peter, Robb, Simon, Sophia, Stephen and Val.

Thank you to Chris Junck, the invasive species coordinator of View Royal for hosting us and all the work you do revitalizing habitat in View Royal! To join the Volunteer View Royal team, please email Chris at restorevr@gmail.com, and find the team on FACEBOOK HERE

Thank you very much to the Town of View Royal for your continual support for our GV Green Team program in your municipality! Your funding makes it possible for us to engage community and help revitalize habitat throughout your parks !

Thank you to our in-kind sponsors for providing thank you gifts to our volunteers: LUSH Cosmetics for providing great bath items, Camino Chocolate for providing chocolate. Plus our granola bars were donated by the awesome Nature’s Path

PHOTO ALBUM FROM THE EVENT IS FOUND HERE

Highlights

• 19 GVGT volunteers participated and contributed 56 volunteer hours
• 11 volunteers had never been to Portage Park before
• 12 of the volunteers were introduced to planting native trees.  
• 8 of the volunteers were introduced to removing invasive English Ivy!
• We removed approximately 10 cubic metres of invasive plants and revitalized an area measuring approx. 100 square metres.
• We planted 10 grand-fir trees! 
• We had 3 volunteers from the awesome Benevity!

What volunteers said about their experience

Gives the opportunity to experience activities to improve the natural surroundings. Creates awareness among the people who participate, even if they know things – there is always some more learning. And of course, it improves the park to regain itself in its real natural form. Keep it up! Good to collaborate with other agencies.

Great group of folks to work with. View Royal staff (Chris) was very welcoming too and a pleasure to work with.

There are two kinds of impact created. The primary one is, of course, is helping to return the land in question to its original state by removing invasive species; and the other is creating an opportunity for like-minded people of all ages and backgrounds to come together to do something useful. This secondary result is community-building and, to my mind, equally as valuable.