Plantings teach Sarnia students about environment, native species

Mike Smalls has his hands in a lot of planting projects.

The Climate Action Sarnia-Lambton member was at Sarnia’s Great Lakes secondary school May 5, guiding students with the school’s key and environmental studies clubs creating a woodland habitat.

“It’s a combination of some woody shrubs and trees, but efficiently . . . it’s more of a pollinator garden,” he said.

Species included river birch, chokecherry and various herbaceous perennials, he said.

Cardboard was put down around the plants and covered in mulch as a biodegradable weed guard for the garden’s first year, Smalls noted.

He also plans to help students at Queen Elizabeth II and London Road schools plant mini-forests, planting tightly packed upper-, mid- and lower-storey trees that will grow and compete with each other to create a thicket in as little as eight or 10 years.

Those are more for bird habitat and carbon sequestering, he said.

Another is planned for Wyoming’s Wilpstra Park as part of a “really big” four-stage project starting May 13, Smalls said.

And the third stage of what could be a 180-tree mini-forest at Alexander MacKenzie secondary is set for May 18, after another woodland habitat planting at Wyoming’s Holy Rosary Catholic elementary school May 15, he said.

Smalls also speaks at schools, local churches and job sites, trying to convince people to plant more native species, since certain species of moths, bees, butterflies and other pollinators can depend on a single species to survive, he said.

“Even in your backyard. . . the right shrub can make a difference to something,” he said.

There’s lots of space locally to create habitat, he said.

“Nothing is going to land on that lawn,” he said. “There’s no food there.”

The aim of working in schools is to get kids interested in looking after the environment, he said.

“Then maybe they’ll go home and maybe, through osmosis, they can get their parents excited about the same thing,” he said. “Because there’s lots as individuals we can do.”

Service clubs have been instrumental in making several projects happen, he said.

Sarnia-Lambton Golden K Kiwanis Club, for instance, funded the $1,100 Great Lakes planting project and is contributing — along with Climate Action Sarnia-Lambton and the Rotary Club of Sarnia Bluewaterland — to the $2,000 Queen Elizabeth II and $1,000 London Road school project, said club president Dennis Loucks.

“We want to encourage kids to think about the environment, climate change and the importance of planting native plants so they can start the whole process in their lives. . . thinking about the importance of planting plants, and native plants, for their generation,” he said.

Kiwanis also sponsors the key club at Great Lakes and elementary school builders clubs help kids become school and community leaders, he said. Members hold various initiatives to raise money for local charities.

“This is a chance for them to do something for their own school,” he said of the latest project at Great Lakes.

Jonas Johansen, 15, said he joined Great Lakes’ key club to help do something positive around the school and because it looked interesting.

“I’m glad I got out of class to do this,” he said. “I’ve always enjoyed this kind of stuff.”