Manuela Franco works Friday on the Police Point Pollinator Park. The park still still being brought to life, and will attract pollinators to the park. -- NEWS PHOTO MO CRANKER
mcranker@medicinehatnews.com@mocranker
The parking lot at Police Point Park will soon be the place to bee.
City parks staff as well as Medicine Hat College students and faculty are working to create the Police Point Pollinator Park in the parking lot closest to the Nature Centre.
“This is an area where we wanted to have an ecologically-friendly initiative,” said parks technician Keziah Lesko-Gosselin. “We also wanted to have this in a place where there are education opportunities, and Police Point is the perfect place for that.”
The pollinator park is being built in between two sets of parking areas, where weeds usually grew.
“Nothing good was really growing here before,” said Lesko-Gosselin. “We wanted to have native vegetation in this area to promote a pollinator habitat – that will attract pollinators to the area.
“Pollinators promote so much plant growth – they’re really important agriculturally.”
Lesko-Gosselin says the pollinator area will have native vegetation to the Cypress Hills area, which means it will be very low maintenance.
“Ideally, once everything is in place, the area here will be self sustaining,” she said. “One side of the pollinator area is more dry land, so it will require much less watering in the future.
“The other side is a bit more of a higher altitude area and features plants you might find in the Foothills area. It might take a bit more watering than the other side, but still, it will be very minimal.”
The key pollinators in the area will be bees, birds and butterflies – with other species like bats helping out.
Lesko-Gosselin says she hopes to see more parks of this kind set up around the city in the future.
She added a special thanks to those from Medicine Hat College who are helping make this park happen.
“They are providing materials and a lot of labour,” she said. “We just want to say a big thank you to them. Their knowledge and helping hands has been key to making this happen.”
