Saskatoon garden club focused on urban biodiversity hits 101 members

A growing group of gardeners in Saskatoon are helping promote urban biodiversity one garden at a time.

There are now 101 members of Pollinator Paradise YXE, a group working to bring back native plants and wildlife to the city.

What started as a small group two years ago has taken root in Saskatoon.

“We started in the spring of 2021, and this year we registered our 101st pollinator paradise,” said Joanne Blythe, a coordinator with Pollinator Paradise YXE. “So that’s quite a milestone.”

Blythe explains to become a member, you need at least 15 native plants in your garden, but they don’t all have to be different.

Of those, at least one must help sustain caterpillars, and one must be a pollen or nectar producer. There needs to be bedding areas for bugs, a source of water and no use of pesticides is allowed.

But she says the reward is worth the effort.

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“You just get to watch and observe and enjoy what’s happening and see all the life that comes in,” Blythe told CTV News.

“I think we are restoring part of the native ecosystem, and we are also making a really good connection ourselves with the land.”

The initiative has caught the attention of a university researcher who is looking at the benefits and challenges of bringing more greenery to cities.

“What we really want is to bring back nature to cities,” said Ana Hidalgo, a faculty member in Geography and Planning at the University of Saskatchewan.

“And of course doing that is going to work towards adaptation to climate change, towards creating more resilient cities, and towards more healthy environments.”

“There’s another pollinator paradise over there that wasn’t there a year ago. So it’s happening gradually.”

And Blythe says one of the benefits of native plants is that they are designed for our climate and that they are self-seeding.

That means no more costly trips to the garden store every spring.

One of the original members says the buzz is catching on, and some neighbours have joined in.

“I think it’s been good, and it’s been creeping around,” said Keith Bell.

And for people looking to start a pollinator paradise in their backyard, it’s a good idea to look for reputable sources of native plants rather than buying a bag of seeds that may not contain what they say.

“In British Columbia in 2012, they looked at contamination of some of these native blends and found they were chock full of invasive plant species,” said James Tansey, an entomologist with the Saskatchewan Ministry of Agriculture.

“There are sources in Saskatoon that will provide bona fide native plants.”

While the gardening season is short in Saskatoon, Blythe is hoping to gain a few more members before the snow flies.