The Chestermere Rotary Club, Bee City Committee and the Parks Department have teamed up to promote food security in the community with the Rotary Edible Forest and Community Abundance Project.
The project is to develop public landscapes that feature perennial food products while encouraging community cohesiveness.
“The goals of this project are to reduce food scarcity, and increase food security,” said Chestermere Rotarian Jason McKee
He added, “While fostering an educational program for the next generation to understand where food comes from and what they can do to take their food security into their own hands.”
McKee is hopeful that the groundwork for the garden by the cannel pathway will be completed in the autumn, while the planting will be done in the spring of next year.
“The idea is for each plot to have signage that encourages a guided learning tour,” Mckee said.
The signs will indicate what the plants are, what sources of life the plants support, and how they work together to form a microclimate.
“Residents could see Currant Crossing, Berry Boulevard, or Pear Paradise Parkway, a few benches, and a specialized bee garden,” McKee said.
The Rotary Edible Forest and Community Abundance Project will encourage healthy biodiversity in the community by featuring pollinators.
“We’re creating flowering plants where bees can graze,” McKee said.
He added, “We agreed to not put any bee habitat on site. Bees are very passive around humans unless they
feel the colony is threatened and being near a bee habitat poses a small risk.”
Although the Rotary Edible Forest and Community Abundance Project is open unrestricted grazing, the organization expects there to be a surplus of fruit that won’t be harvested at the correct time.
“Rotary will serve as the catchall to donate the surplus of the food to the food bank, similar to the community garden plots that are donated to the food bank,” McKee said.
In the future, McKee wants to expand the Rotary Edible Forest and Community Abundance Project locations to as many areas as possible and increase the ease of accessibility for everyone.
“We do expect some die-off each year, it’s a fairly harsh growing climate, especially for an immature system, it can be valuable to extreme weather fluctuations, or torrential rain,” McKee said.
He added, a group of volunteers would continue to replant the garden until the system becomes mature enough and becomes resilient in unexpected inclement weather.
“This is awesome. I do not doubt that this is going to be a thing of beauty and what a great collaboration,” said Chestermere City Councillor Michelle Young.
