A Blogfest Over a Project in Brooklyn - New York Times

A Blogfest Over a Project in Brooklyn - New York Times . The future is here.

Orchids of the Ojibway

To add to my post about the ecological design and planning of the Green Corridor in Windsor, I would just like to include a link to the website of the Ojibway Nature Centre where the Ojibway Prairie Complex is located.
As you can see from the aerial photos, the area is surrounded by urban development and is dissected by a hydroelectric right-of-way (ROW). This picture demonstrates how isolated this patch of natural preserve really is and highlights the importance of planting native species in our backyards, in our schools and in public spaces to enhance the ecological integrity of our bioregion. As you can see from this area map, The Ojibway Nature Centre site is close to other areas of natural and scientific interest (ANSI), such as Walpole Island and Point Pelee National Park .
When looking through the Ojibway Nature Centre website, I was surprised to find strikingly beautiful and rare varieties of orchids thriving there; and I was pleased to discover that some of these orchids can grow happily throughout the Carolinian life zone, which means that they are appropriate for native prairie and meadow gardens in Toronto! Here is the link to read more about the rare and wonderful orchids of southern Ontario:
http://www.ojibway.ca/orchids.htm
(Photo, above-right, is of Small Yellow Lady-slipper Orchid).
Cheers,
Ping

GREEN CORRIDOR or GREENWAY?

In light of the lecture about the distinction between Greenways and Corridors, I thought that the emerging 'Green Corridor' http://www.greencorridor.ca/ in Windsor Ontario would be an interesting case to look at. The Green Corridor project is an artist driven, community-based collaboration between Canadian artist Noel Harding, the University of Windsor, and various other community stakeholders. The plan is to redevelop the 'international bridge corridor' that links Canada to the United States at the Windsor-Detroit border as part of a green infrastructure that links the people to the water and also improves the aesthetic of one of the busiest transport bridges along the border. The multi-disciplinary Green Corridor design team is revisioning the entire bridge corridor as an opportunity to engage the Windsor community in environmental landscape design and planning. This project is especially relevant to our course because the designs for the some of the key features of the entire Green Corridor were developed by students in a class at the University of Windsor! Working closely with artists, architects, engineers, scientists, and city officials, students at the University of Windsor were able to help design a 'nature bridge,' which is a vegetated pedestrian overpass that allows people to access a sensitive wetland area for educational purposes. How's that for some inspiration? Other features of the Green Corridor include the construction of a river turbine that generates power and an eco-learning house. This area of Windsor is also notable because it is close to the Ojibway Plains - "Ontario's largest and most important prairie-savanna sites," according to Tallgrass Ontario (http://www.tallgrassontario.org/PrairiePlaces_Ojibway.htm). Evidently, the Windsor area is not merely a transportation corridor but a site of ecological importance. Although the Green Corridor project is not a wildlife corridor in the strictest sense, it does stand to be an important greenway that allows people to commune with rare and beautiful pockets of native habitats that are threatened to become extinct. It seems that there is a fight going on to save the Ojibway Prarie Complex http://www.tallgrassontario.org/Publications/CPOWNews%203_29_05.pdf
and hopefully the Green Corridor project can bring attention to the plight of this majestic landscape. I think I'll be taking a trip to the High Park savanna in the summer to appreciate our local piece of the prairie!
Enjoy the fine weather!
(^_^)Ping
P.S. I found a link to the website of Noel Harding (http://www.noelharding.ca/), the artist who worked on the Green Corridor in Windosr. It turns out that he also worked on an ecological design project, called Elevated Wetlands, in Toronto's Don Valley. The artwork is a solar-powered pump that draws rainwater to the the top of the vegetated sculpture to clean the water naturally before it is returned to the earth. An innovative marriage of art and ecology that urban designers all strive for. Plus, it was a community-based project, meaning that industry, government, students, and community members were involved, making it another excellent example of how participatory planning and collaborative art methods can be applied as tools of ecological landscape design and implementation.