T.O. Adopt-A-Park
Information
To adopt a park through the City’s Adopt-a-Park program. The minimum commitment is to clean up the adopted park of litter. We have a larger vision in mind and are in the process of exploring a range of possibilities and dreaming about what could be!
Location: Ottawa
Members: 14
Latest Activity: Dec 5, 2012
The Vision
We have a larger vision in mind and are in the process of exploring a range of possibilities and dreaming about what could be!
Imagine a kind of community centre without walls, an outdoor space where people can gather, celebrate, play and have opportunities to learn and engage in a number of Transition activities.
In the centre of the park is the cob oven. This is the hearth and heart of the space. It was built by community members with local materials. Everyone got involved. The kids especially loved playing in the mud! It was a real, hands on learning experience and run as a reskilling workshop. Now, during the warmer months, bread making workshops are held every week. The oven is also used for regular 100 mile potluck meals, pizza nights and autumn harvest feasts. Surrounding the oven is an expanse of multi-use space that is the staging ground for all kinds of activities. Picnics and potlucks are popular here, as well as knit-ins and crochet clubs. A neighbourhood group runs bicycle repair workshops. Other workshops in the past have included Fermentation 101, In Season- How to Cook with Seasonal Food, The Lost Art of Hand Tools, Straw Bale Basics, Rainwater Harvesting and more. Twice a month, from May to October, gardeners gather for the backyard and community garden produce swap. Got a bumper crop of zucchini but your beans were a flop? Too many tomatoes that you don't know what to do with, but no basil? Bring your excess produce and swap with others! Wander on by anytime and you might catch the neighbourhood storyteller surrounded by a group of enraptured children or a local musical group performing on a summer’s night. Join the Gleaners for their annual crab apple cider pressing. You might also stumble upon a group of people just starting out on their tour of other areas of the park. There is the pollinator garden, the permaculture food forest, edible weeds, the hedgerow, the medicinal garden. There are so many spaces to explore and learn about!
Your Ideas Welcomed
These are just a few ideas of what might be possible for an adopted Transition Ottawa Park. Other ideas are most welcome. Obviously we want to work very closely with the city, following appropriate by-laws, and with the support of community members in the neighbourhood around the park. We are at the very beginning stages of this initiative and slowly feeling our way along, open to what might be and seeing where this takes us. What we will be able to achieve will largely be dependent on the energy put into it by those who want to get involved. By the end of this summer we hope to have found a park, adopted it and organise a small event like a potluck to invite people to, to start sharing in our vision.
Vote for your 'Candidate' Park
The City has provided us with the following list of centrally-located parks available for adoption. A map showing the location and size of the parks can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/28trh69. If you would like to be involved in this initiative, please join the “Adopt a Park” group and vote on your preferred park(s) for adoption (criteria may include size, location, current state of the park and amount of litter lying around, sun, shade, watershed, soil quality etc...). To vote, please go to the Transition Ottawa page at http://transitionottawa.ning.com/page/vote-for-transition-ottawas?xg_source=activity.
We will most likely plan a tour of the top three parks, so we can visit the sites and do a more detailed assessment.
List of Candidate Parks
1) Jack Purcell Park: 320 Jack Purcell Lane 0.88 hectares
2) Brown’s Inlet Park: 65 Craig Street 2.2 hectares
3) Chamberlain Park: 80 Chamberlain 0.88 hectares
4) Dalhousie South Park: 343 Bell Street 0.10 hectares
5) Glebe Memorial Park: 75 Glendale Ave 0.7 hectares
6) Senator Eugene Forsey: 964 Bronson Ave 0.2 hectares
7) Baribeau Park: 200 Baribeau Street, 1.26 Hectares
8) Richelieu Park: 300 Des Peres Blancs Ave, 8.8 Hectares
9) Copp Park: 750 Hillsdale, 7.16 Hectares
10) New Edinburgh Park: 193 Stanley Ave, 3.00 Hectares
11) Fairmont Park: 265 Fairmont Ave, 1.5 Hectares
12) Fisher Park: 250 Holland Ave, 3.8 Hectares
13) Laroche Park: 52 Bayview Road, 2.4 Hectares
14) Reid Park: 40 Reid Ave, 2.0 Hectares
Discussion Forum
Fruit tree program in Ottawa! 6 Replies
Hi all, I am interested in starting some sort of fruit tree program similar to what they do in Richmond, Vancouver and Victoria, BC. The Victoria Fruit Tree Project, volunteers and a couple a…Continue
Tags: share, food, tree, fruit
Started by Isa L-Morin. Last reply by Isa L-Morin Dec 21, 2010.
Comment Wall
Comment
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Comment by Tyler Blanchett on December 5, 2012 at 12:46pm -
Hi ! This is a message for the main contact or inspiring main contact. But if neither exists please read on always. IT’s important!
Thank you for your interest in Transition Ottawa! My name is Ty and I've been asked to assist TO by checking in with working groups in order to clean up our website and archive outdated material. Sorry if you have already received this email. We are asking groups to fill in and email back the questions below. Please reach me at tymblanchett@gmail.com.
TO Group Questionnaire
1. Name of Group?
2. Main Contact?
3. Best form of communication for contact?
4. Is group still active?
5. Should we remove profile or edit your group intro to say that it needs a lead organizer?
6. Are you using social media? Has it been useful?
7. Your Comments or favourite quote/joke/rules of thumb?
By the end of December please let me know how you would like us to proceed.
Thank you so much for your interest and participation! If you can, please continue. Here are our current events. http://transitionottawa.ning.com/events/event/listUpcoming
Cheers and take care of yourself because if you can’t take care of you, who will take care of everything else?
-Ty & TO
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Comment by Guy Souliere on August 29, 2010 at 9:49am -
Absolutely meeting at the adopt a park garden ,teaching our neighbors is the way to go , the wellbeing feeling is contagious .....i dont know much about gardening but i pretty convinced there must be a way to transform my small front and back yard to eatable garden that could look good .
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Comment by Pamela Scaiff on August 29, 2010 at 9:08am
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A little story of inspiration for the Adopt-A-Park gang.
As you know, I am on the steering committee for the new BUGs community garden at Glendale Memorial Park. There was huge controversy about the garden in the consultation phase. Fortunately, the city was supportive, but we needed community support for the city to give us the final nod.
This summer, we have been building and planting. Because this garden is in a park, the community has witness the whole process. The kids and parents come in to talk to the gardeners and to look at the plants. We get questions and suggestions.
Last night, my neighbours told me that they were very impressed with the raised beds and amazed at how much food was growing in them. They have a small backyard and want to grow more food, but really don't know how. By watching BUGs gardeners, they are inspired and want to take our ideas and move then into their own little gardening space. They asked if they could pick our brains.
Part of BUGs' mandate is community education. When I told the neighbours that there will be two workshops in the spring and that the community would be invited, they were excited! This family is not the only family interested. We have had lots of similar comments in the past couple of weeks.
So, all this to say, that simply by modelling new ideas, we spread the word in a relaxed, non-apocalyptic way. Getting people excited rather than scared; teaching our neighbours skills; building community -- this is what adopting a park can do.
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Comment by Amber Westfall on August 24, 2010 at 9:10am -
Some inspiration!
I especially love the Mill Creek Farm. They have beehives, solar panels, a composting toilet and a cob oven!
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Comment by Guy Souliere on August 4, 2010 at 10:52am
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We all would like a park near our community right as Katherine suggest i believe having a centrally localed park large enough... to spark interest in the community and not duplicating other venues would make it viable because this is prototype project or hopefully the first of many others to also bring people from the outside to see what is possible .the first is the hardest and once we are successful we may apply this our own community such as mine in Old Ottawa South ... see you tomorrow at the green door
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Comment by Gabriel Thibault on August 3, 2010 at 9:31pm -
Hello folks. The deadline for voting for your candidate park is August 6.
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Comment by Katherine Forster on July 31, 2010 at 8:14am -
oh that's great info Pamela! I am hoping to go see Dufferin Grove Park in September!
Gabriela - it would be great to know about the Waterloo one. D.G. Park has been having some difficulties - between the city and the community lately so it would be great to learn from a couple of similar examples.
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Comment by Pamela Scaiff on July 30, 2010 at 11:21am
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Hello Folks,
Just catching up after a two-week cyber holiday! While I was in Toronto, I visited Dufferin Grove Park. It was an amazing outdoor community centre. I took lots of pictures, got one of their newsletters, talked to people using the park and generally, had a good time! Tomorrow, I'll filter the information and post. What I realized, is that we need to have space to really do what we want to accomplish. Parks that are already busy are serving their communities. An underused park would be great for us to adopt.
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Comment by Gabriela on July 30, 2010 at 10:48am -
I talked to a colleague that used to live in Waterloo and apparently they have a similar park/community place where they even have a cob oven! Have heard of it? It may be wise to take advice from them...
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Comment by Katherine Forster on July 18, 2010 at 8:58pm
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I live close to Baribeau - we'd have to get the City to confirm where this park is - the only green space is part of the school on Baribeau. I'm not sure how this is City owned when it looks like part of the school yard.
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