Tuesday 29 March 2016

Hal Hopkins: Building Bee Hotels

Join Highlands Garden Club in its commitment to helping our community protect pollinators and “Bee Friendly”. This is very important because native bees ensure the growth of the food we eat as well as the flowers we enjoy. To do this job they need food, protection from pesticides and shelter. We can all help by planting native heirloom plants, avoiding the use of pesticides and:

Building Bee Hotels

Highlands Garden Club invites you to hear guest speaker Hal Hopkins, a man who is avidly involved in studying native bees.

Date and time: Wednesday, April 13 at 7:00 pm
Location: Highlands Community League, 6112 – 113 Avenue
Admission: FREE or Bring seeds to share with your neighbors

Hal has set up and monitored bee hotels at the University of Alberta Farm and has collaborated with the Edmonton & Area Land Trust on bee hotels. He shared information in an article on bee hotels in the Fall 2015 issue of Alberta Nature magazine. Hal will now share with us his experiences on what the bees prefer and what they don’t like.

Note: Bee hotels are built for solitary bees which do not sting.

Monday 14 March 2016

From Cell to Sell: Creekside H&G bedding plant plugs

On Saturday, March 12th, Club members took a field trip to Creekside Home and Garden (formerly known as Dunvegan Gardens EDM).

We were greeted by Roq (Rock) and his staff who provided a great tour of the garden centre.

It is quite amazing to see the process:
A machine plants seeds into cells by needle.
Seeds get planted in the starter cells (512 to a sheet).  Plugs are then finished as bedding plants. We often forget all the hard work that goes into the process and this trip was a great eye opener.

Photos by Erica.




Finished bedding plants in the garden centre.