TORONTO, April 21 (Xinhua) –Toronto volunteers and Ontario green industry professionals came together to restore the lawns of a popular downtown park ahead of Earth Day celebrations.
St. James Park, once the encampment site for hundreds of Occupy Toronto demonstrators last November, received new sods and lawn care from local community residents and landscape professionals on Saturday. The effort comes as the city prepares to observe Earth Day on Sunday, April 22.
The cleanup is a continuation of last December’s revitalization initiative, in which Ontario green industry companies jointly donated 11,000 square-metre of new sods to the park after its lawns became devastated by the 39-day protest.
Since then, with the help of 150 volunteers from Landscape Ontario Horticultural Trade Association, the non-profit Nursery Sod Growers Association of Ontario, and Project Evergreen, the park’s muddy and malnourished grass turfs had been fully restored at no cost to the city.
On Saturday, volunteers gathered early morning to mow the lawns of the now vibrant park and some trimmed the treetops while on harnesses. By late morning, community residents managed to rake and remove all the scattered leaves on the grounds, and helped apply fertilizers to the soil surface.
“When we heard that St. James Park was so trampled from the protest … we saw how bad it was and city council was debating what they were going to do to take care of it, they didn’t have the money and when we heard that we heeded the call,” said Kyle Tobin, president of Lawnsavers, a company that’s a member of Landscape Ontario.
“So today what we’ll be doing is we’ll be aerating the lawn, which is important to allow air and nutrients and water to get down to the roots, it also de-compacts the soil so that roots have somewhere to actually grow,” Tobin said.
Tobin is one of the lead event organizers for this year’s cleanup. He stresses the importance of maintaining the lawns in the park, since they can potentially generate enough oxygen for 5,000 people.
City officials estimate the damage caused by last year’s protest to be around $60,000 CAD. Meanwhile, Ontario’s green industry calculated its combined total cost of contribution, including sod donation and man-hours to be around $350,000 CAD.
“I think it’s fun in the first place that we take care of the green spaces in the neighbourhood,” said Inge Zeldenrust, a volunteer who lives near St. James Park. “To be able to play here and enjoy it, it should be clean and healthy and I think it’s something we need to do for all the green spaces in our city. I think it’s a really important thing.”
In recognition of Ontario green industry’s effort to clean up St. James Park, a representative from Mayor Rob Ford’s office was on-site to hand out an appreciation plaque to Landscape Ontario.