POP Community Stewardship on Public Lands Meeting

The Peoples Official Plan Coalition (POP) organized an outstanding Community Stewardship on Public Lands Meeting on Saturday, February 8th, 2025 at Trinity United Church.

This important meeting brought together representatives from local organizations and citizens groups with experience in community gardening, green initiatives and stewardship of public land. The purpose of the event was to discuss ideas, listen to broad perspectives and share current challenges in order to proactively prioritize and align policy action items and our policy 'asks' prior to City Council meetings on:

The Community Garden Action Plan (discussed at the Community and Social Services Committee)
Use and Care of Roads By-law, which includes planting within the Right of Way (Garden Boulevard) (discussed at the Transportation Committee)

The meeting began with a wonderful Land Acknowledgement from Harmony from Assembly of 7 Generations, presentations from Just Food's Moe Garahan and Kate Veinot, and Bel Air Community Association's Harry Fischer, who first initiated the idea to hold this workshop and is an active member of Maitland Area Pollinator Projects (MAPP).

The event proceeded to feature breakout sessions to discuss specific and shared concerns related to planting on public lands in Ottawa - mainly City of Ottawa lands, but also included NCC lands and institutional lands like schools, hospitals, etc. Topics included, but were not restricted to:

Community food gardening
Pollinator/native plant gardening
Invasive plant species identification and control
Rewilding/naturalization (including any policies that interfere with this)
Tree planting and canopy regeneration
Insurance
Community engagement in municipal policy and operations related to planting on public lands

After the breakout sessions and a wonderful lunch, we held large-group discussions to deliberate where there were agreements and conflicting opinions regarding certain policy 'asks'. With the help of excellent facilitation from Moe, we were able to come to a consensus on what we believed were the most important priorities to push at the municipality. Some identified priorities included a streamlined application process for community stewardship, removal of invasive species from the city's planting list, priorities for planting edible trees, city-provided insurance or the transition to a waiver for stewardship activities, better consultation and recognition of community leaders as subject matter experts, protection of wetlands, allowing permanent raised beds for edible plants in the ROW, and better city-wide public education on the benefits of trees, tree maintenance, pollinators, native species, and gardening with biodiversity in mind (among many, many more!).

Thank you to all who attended - your participation will help positively impact city policy and planning for years into the future.

Stay tuned for a POP report coming soon summarizing the meeting discussion and next steps.