Photo generously donated by Lisa Mason
Communities across the Zone enthusiastically engaged in positive actions for wildlife this year through In the Zone in Windsor, Hamilton, Burlington, Sarnia, Stratford, Sparta, Oakville, Toronto and London. Local partner’s outreach efforts were enhanced through In the Zone garden parties, workshops and events. A total of 4,291 people engaged with In the Zone through outreach events in 2018.
Native plants are essential for food and shelter for monarch butterflies, frogs, turtles, owls, bees and other native wildlife, especially as pressures from climate change and human development intensify. By filling in habitat gaps, private green spaces growing native plants can play a critical role in restoring habitat at the backyard, neighbourhood and ecosystem level.
The In The Zone Tracker
The In the Zone Tracker is a citizen science tool designed to ‘crowd-source’ healthy habitat on diverse, settled landscapes. The Tracker can be used by anyone with a yard or balcony. It tracks natural, aquatic and cultural habitat.
Cultural habitat is not currently counted as a significant part of our natural systems but in the Carolinian Zone, upgrading cultural habitat is needed to help reverse habitat loss.
over 3500 Healthy Gardeners
Signed up with In The Zone
over 1900 Gardens Tracked
Completed garden trackers
over 16,000 hectares
Participants have tracked over 16,000 hectares of property
96% are READY to GROW
Participants indicated that they want to grow more native plants
over 2000 Habitat Features
Participants reported healthy habitat features on their properties like brush piles, stones, logs and snags
over 160,000 reached
In The Zone garden participants are influencers, sharing their healthy garden stories with thousands across the Zone
In The Zone Participants are Leading the Way with an average of 128 Healthy Garden Points! Healthy Garden Points highlight healthy gardening choices for wild and human communities. They are relative measures linked to the science of healthy ecosystems and include ecological, social and green economic indicators that have positive impacts on biodiversity.
In The Zone Outreach
WWF and Carolinian Canada launch new native plant tag
The In the Zone label will help gardeners make informed decisions about the plants they add to their gardens
It will now be easier for gardeners to choose plants that are good for wildlife and the environment thanks to a new native plant tag label, unveiled by World Wildlife Fund Canada and Carolinian Canada at the Wild Green Drinks kick-off event for the Go Wild Grow Wild Green Expo.
Developed in consultation with native plant growers as part of the organizations’ In the Zone wildlife gardening program, and with generous funding from Ontario Trillium Foundation, the new tag identifies plants that are native to southern Ontario’s ecologically threatened Carolinian zone, locally grown and ethically sourced.
Gardeners can purchase plants bearing the tag at the Expo and participating nurseries across southern Ontario.
Oakville ‘Digs’ Pollinators workshop
Ben Porchuk of Carolinian Canada together with partners Oakville Green and Sheridan College Office for Sustainability delivered a “humorous, inspirational and educational” workshop session catered to the Oakville region of the Carolinian Zone, specifically incorporating native plant species found in Sheridan College’s campus medicine wheel and pollinator gardens. By the end of the workshop, 100% of participants had signed up for the In the Zone tracker, and 89% said the workshop increased their knowledge of pollinator and native plant connections and threats facing Oakville’s natural spaces.
Read about all of our 2018-2019 garden parties, walks, and talks
ITZ at Canada Blooms
In the Zone had a featured booth for a 10-day Canada Blooms experience. The show was a great success for the team, and we couldn’t have made so many excellent connections without the help of our energetic and professional ITZ volunteers. Canada blooms accomplishments by the numbers:
- Staffed the booth for 100 hours
- Spoke with over 2,600 visitors!
- Signed up over 1,000 people for the ITZ newsletter
Canada’s Biggest Wildlife Garden
Together with our 11-champion native plant nursery partners, we launched a challenge to Grow Canada’s Biggest Wildlife Garden and an In the Zone Native Plant tag.
Travelling Display with RBC Foundation
Our team developed Climate-smart ITZ travelling display resources with leveraged funding from RBC to help inform decisions and actions to use native plants for climate-smart yards
Source for Native Plants Registry Updates
We updated our source registry for native plant vendors so native plant consumers can make informed decisions about where they are buying native plants, through an improved user interface.
Photo generously donated by Bruce Manning
Spotlight on Partnerships
Ontario Native Plant Growers Association
The In the Zone team fostered the creation of the Ontario Native Plant Growers (ONPG) association this year. Paul LaPorte, chair person of the ONPG writes,
The World Wildlife Fund-Canada and Carolinian Canada have played an essential role in coordinating and facilitating discussions between Ontario nurseries that specialize in native plant propagation. At the core of these discussions, it became apparent that we all share a common interest in both protecting and restoring Ontario’s native ecology. Native plants are a fundamental component of this goal. Through these initiatives, we collectively agreed to form the Ontario Native Plant Growers association (ONPG). Our mission is to serve as a collective voice for Native Plant Nurseries, to supply quality native plants and seed and promote their use in restoring and sustaining healthy, biodiverse ecosystems in Ontario.
We continue to maintain a strong relationship with both the World Wildlife Fund-Canada and Carolinian Canada, recognizing the vital support they offer to our association through communications, education and outreach programs such as the “In the Zone” tag project, which will help to protect the genetic provenance of Ontario’s native plant species.
-Paul LaPorte (Chair) - Ontario Native Plant Growers
Native Plant Tag Partners
Champion partners Return the Landscape and Dave Watson led the Challenge to Grow Canada’s Biggest Wildlife Garden by raising awareness of In the Zone at a Green Drinks event and citizen science workshop in Sarnia
