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What we are doing together

The Southern Ontario Seed Strategy will help prioritize actions to help grow more native plants, grow them better, and set a course for future restoration. The SOSS seeks to restore relationships with native plants in Southern Ontario. Native plants gift our world with resilience, integrity, stability, beauty, connection, love, wonder and hope. They come from wild, local communities and have deep relationships with other native organisms and are adapted to local land and water. Despite being often marginalized as weeds, native plants are powerful in their ability to protect the water, air, and soil, supporting ecosystems and quality of life for all.

Colonialism has created crises of extinction and climate and adds millions of exotic plants to the landscape every year. With ancient ingenuity, native plants show us another way forward to regenerate relationships for healthy and sustainable landscapes. They share potential to connect hearts, minds, bodies, knowledge, habitat, and opportunities for all generations to thrive. By prioritizing locally grown and sourced seeds, we will learn about our native species, the land and each other. The seeds we protect, and plant now will define our future.

By working together through the development of the SOSS, we are increasing our capacity to protect and propagate the diversity of native seeds and plants we need to restore, enhance and expand healthy landscapes. We will explore ways to:

  • Support Indigenous-led rematriation and seed sovereignty
  • Protect genetic diversity of seeds
  • Create space for native plants everywhere from local sources
  • Empower people to grow healthy vital native plant populations

The SOSS collective gathers monthly in ethical space to work together on developing a seed strategy through knowledge sharing, discussion, and working groups. The collective development of a draft strategy is to be completed by early 2024.

The SOSS is a journey to connect places by restoring the flow of seed

The SOSS acknowledges/recognizes that southern Ontario is the unceded traditional territories of many nations, where Indigenous people continue to steward ancestral seed, as they have for millennia in this place. Rooted in the land, plant communities express the history of the land to those that understand them. Healthy plant populations sustain processes of both dispersal and local adaptation based on this heritage and these connections.

Southern Ontario is a highly productive landscape, but its unique ecosystems face many pressures driven by colonial attitudes and practices, such as habitat loss, invasive species, pollution and climate change. This region is home to the highest diversity of wild species, a quarter of Canada’s human population, and is home to more Species at Risk than anywhere else in the country. Less than 15% of this landscape is protected and habitat levels in some areas are far below the 30-50% minimum recommended for healthy landscapes.

On this landscape the SOSS will help protect healthy plant populations as seed sources for future restoration, including historical remnants and old growth ecosystems. It will support, uncover, and accelerate new opportunities and innovations to grow seed orchards and a robust connective network of healthy habitat and high-quality natural infrastructure.

SOSS Collective Meeting Schedule

Year 

Month 

Day 

Time 

Topics 

2022 

June 

29 

2 hours 

Ethical Space, Updates, Meeting Schedule  

2022 

July 

27 

2 hours 

SOSS Vision: why does this matter? 

Autonomy of Native Plants 

2022 

August 

31 

3 hours 

Committees & Components 

2022 

September 

28 

2 hours 

Tree Seed Guidelines, Intro to Genetic Concepts - Postponed to October 2023

2022 

October 

26 

2 hours 

Equity within The Native Plant Economy

2022 

November 

30 

3 hours 

Focal Species

2022 

December 

14 

 

BREAK 

2023 

January 

25 

2 hours 

Grass & Forb Guidelines, Orchards & Seed Production Areas

2023 

February 

22 

2 hours 

Industry Update & Seed Needs Forecasting   

2023 

March 

22 

3 hours 

Biodiversity as a Foundation for Two-Eyed Seeing 

2023 

April 

26 

2 hours 

Progress, Connections and Reaffirmation: National Strategy and the SOSS 

2023 

May 

31 

2 hours 

Knowledge Sharing 

2023 

June 

28 

2 hours 

Plant Relatives: Genetics and Assisted Migration in a Changing Climate 

2023 

July 

26 

3 hours 

Ecological and Cultural Restoration

2023 

August 

30 

2 hours 

Health, Food and Medicine - Postponed

2023 

September 

27 

2 hours

SOSS Update Meeting

2023 

October 

25 

2 hours 

Capacity Building and Future Generations - Postponed
Tree Stewardship and Genetics

2023 

November 

29 

3 hours 

Restoration and Reciprocity: Ex/Inter-situ and SAR  
REVIEW / RECAP 

2023 

December 

13 

 

BREAK