This flagship project of Nature Positive Concordia seeks to transform the campus grounds through greatly increasing the number and diversity of native perennial plants while at the same time engaging with the community to increase awareness of the importance of biodiversity. Establishing new pollinator gardens with educational signage identifying the plants and their ecological benefits, this project has the ability to impact all who pass by it. Equally important the gardens will be wholly planted with species native to the Montreal region and identified using their Kanien’kéha names.
This is done not only for its ecological benefits, but to contribute to efforts to decolonize our campus landscape. Our aim for these gardens is not only to create ecological changes. We are seeking to create community around the gardens engaged in the efforts to understand and enhance biodiversity. One of the goals from the COP15 convention on biodiversity, was to “mainstream biodiversity”, this project is attempting to help achieve this goal.
Through volunteer sessions, workshops, biological surveying the concordia community will have the opportunity to enhance their knowledge and understanding biodiversity. Further, this project will work collaborative to showcase other sustainability initiatives at Concordia. The construction of the gardens and signage will be achieved through collaborations with CUCCR and CP3. CUCCR will provide materials and expertise for the building of the gardens. The signage that will be displayed will be housed within frames created by CP3 composed from the plastic pots from the garden plants.