May 16, 2022

Dear Betty Sutherland Stewards,

Thank you to everyone that joined us for our first official plant removal event today! It was really nice to see several familiar faces from our last event, and it was great to meet new stewards that joined us for the first time today.

Geri, Mario, Lu and Chris helped to remove quite a bit of garlic mustard along the trail and into the forest section of the site. Gary, Marlene and Patrick tackled the growing Japanese knotweed (check out the photos to see just how tall it's grown in 2 weeks!), along with removing some garlic mustard and dog strangling vines too. We have a big job ahead of us and we will continue to need your help to keep these plants in check this year, so there will be plenty more opportunities to join in the fun. We also had lots of positive feedback from the public and we received thanks from several people passing by, some of which were interested in learning more.

Gary and I will keep you posted on our next event, but we will likely continue meeting every Sunday, including next Sunday, May 22nd, so look out for communication during the week about the timing. In the meantime, check out the photos from our events here, and feel free to add your own!

While we will dedicate more time to discuss general plant identification in one of our sessions, we encourage you to join iNaturalist (iPhone not a requirement) and join the project specific to our area which Gary has started. It contains a full list of the plants we are tracking and removing, and using this program, we can easily keep track of the type of plants found and communicate it with TNS as well as other organizations. Join here or download the app and search "Betty Sutherland Trail".

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out.