The next and final meeting (until next fall) for the Nova Scotia Wild Flora Society will be outdoors, rain or shine, at Point Pleasant Park in Halifax on Monday May 27 at 6:30pm. Please meet us at the Prince of Wales Martello Tower, shown on the map.
PPP (Point Pleasant Park, 77 ha) is owned by the British Government, but the park is administered by the Department of Canadian Heritage while the Halifax Regional Municipality holds the lease. The municipality pays 1 shilling annually for the lease.
PPP was largely a closed canopy mature evergreen forest until Hurricane Juan hit shores of PPP in Sep 2003, leaving only a few groves untouched. An extensive public consultation was held in 2005 in which the many respondents expressed a desire for “Nature dominated landscape, Natural beauty, a place to connect with local history, a non-commercial park…” The Point Pleasant Park Comprehensive Plan was released in 2008 with a goal “To create a naturalized forest ecosystem”; it was widely applauded. In 2019, a tree-thinning program was begun, the objectives being to cut out invasive tree species such as Norway Maple, and to “thin out the weaker trees”. The final stage of thinning will begin this fall.
After discussing the member business at 6:30, we will look at vegetation in thinned and unthinned areas – there will be lots of spring flowering plants!
Some of us may arrive before 6:30 to scout around the park before the meeting.
