On the first Saturday of November, as many were frantically packing away the last of their gardens before the season’s first snowfall, a small group of volunteers was busy seeding a field of wildflowers meant to last for years to come.
Gathered on a long and narrow strip of land at the base of the Gatineau hills, just west of the Masham-Eardley Road, they were hard at work planting a pollinator meadow – a parcel of land dedicated to growing native plant species key to supporting local pollinators.
For decades the land was owned by Ken and Debbie Rubin, who used it for their organic vegetable and flower farm. In 2022 the couple decided to donate the near 15-hectare property to local land trust Action Chelsea for the Respect of the Environment (ACRE), which in turn named the land Place Eco Rubin.
The Rubins’ hope in donating the land, the northern end of which presses up against Gatineau Park, was to ensure it remained untouched by the housing developments that were slowly crawling westward from the city, and could remain an ecological corridor for animals travelling from the Gatineau Park to the Ottawa River.
And that is exactly what ACRE has worked to do. The non-profit, which now owns 12 properties near the Gatineau Park, works to ensure stewardship and conservation of each property through volunteer-led committees.
Some of these properties, such as the 71-acre forest behind St. Stephens Church in Chelsea ACRE acquired just last week, don’t need much restoration as they’ve seen little human development.
But others do, such as the decades-old hayfields of Place Eco Rubin.
“It’s really required a lot of ecological restoration to get [the land] to a point where it was meeting ACRE’s needs,” explained ACRE president Stephen Woodley.
“We’re trying to protect native species and ecosystems, and ecological connectivity for Gatineau Park. This property is adjacent to Gatineau Park and has a stream that connects down through the Ottawa River and so we’re rewilding this area of that stream.”
The planting of the pollinator meadow, which was done thanks to support from the Canadian Wildlife Federation, marks the completion of the bulk of the work ACRE has undergone since acquiring the property two years ago.
The meadow alone involved many steps. A team spent the summer preparing the three-acre plot to be seeded, seeding oats and ploughing the field many times over to suppress the growth of unwanted species before sewing a mix of wildflower seeds native to this region.
“The field would do a reasonable job rewilding itself, but it would take a long time, and you would never get the results you would get with intentional restoration,” Woodley said.
“We’re trying to allow for native pollinators, which are in decline right across Canada, and they’re valuable for all kinds of farmers. So this will be a population centre for the survival of native pollinators, and the diversity of wildflowers we planted gives them food basically all year long.”
The pollinator meadow planting was the second significant effort made by ACRE to increase the land’s ecological diversity and encourage its use as a wildlife corridor.
In 2022, the same year the trust acquired the land, it organized another group of volunteers to convert a hayfield into a native forest by planting 10,000 trees on five acres of land – an effort to restore it as a habitat for the threatened Golden-winged warbler.
“It’s important we protect some of our properties as green space,” he said. “We’re not very good at doing that in terms of our planning. If you look at the municipal planning process and our MRC planning process, none have the protection of green space as part of their plans. It’s a bit surprising.”
Former property owner Ken Rubin celebrated the completion of the pollinator meadow, as well as the larger ecological restoration of the property.
“With increasing surrounding residential development, Place Eco Rubin acts as a natural park for the local community in the Pontiac and serves as a vital ecological corridor to and from the Gatineau Park,” he told THE EQUITY.
Place Eco Rubin is open to those who want to explore it by foot, and Rubin said ACRE has plans to eventually put a trail system in place to make doing so more accessible.
“These places are around. There’s not too many in the Pontiac, but they’re something worthwhile for people to think about if they’re looking at what to do with their estates or properties, but also they’re needed.”
