Please keep an eye out for this invasive weed. Try to pull it fully by the roots before it flowers. DO NOT compost. Bag it and dump it. For more information please visit the City of Calgary’s information page: https://www.calgary.ca/parks/pests/creeping-bellflower.html
Grounds Clean-up Postponed
Submitted by Yvonne Sabraw on behalf of the Grounds Committee
Hello Sunnyhill Members!
How can we have a Fall Clean-up this Saturday when it still feels like summer?
Continue to enjoy your gardens and yards, and we will reschedule the Fall Clean up. The tentative date is now Saturday, October 16th.
We have gotten some very helpful feedback about the timing for trimming hedges and this lovely time of year is NOT the time for that trimming, so there will be more details on that for the October Clean up.
Until then, please continue to store your brown compostable yard waste bags with leaves, grass clippings and branches at your unit, protected from the weather, until we have the big Post-cleanup pick-up for the City Landfill composting program.
See you in the sunshine this weekend!
Yvonne on behalf of Sunnyhill Grounds
Sunnyhill Housing Co-op 787 3 Street NW 403-270-8405
Permaculture Potential: Permaculture and Air Pollution
Submitted by Debbie Willis, on behalf of the Grounds Committee
I have been reading a hugely informative book called Breath, by James Nestor, about the importance of correct breathing for our mental, emotional and physical health. This book inspired me to investigate how our environment affects our ability to breathe in a healthy way, and the possibility that permaculture at the co-op might improve our air at Sunnyhill Co-op. This feels particularly relevant as Alberta is now on the precipice of a third wave of Covid-19 and we are all concerned about the health of our respiratory systems.
The effects of air pollution:
According to the World Health Organization, a reduction in air pollution – in particular, four key pollutants: particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide – would help cut rates of stroke, lung cancer, asthma, heart disease, and respiratory disease. Small particles get absorbed straight through the lungs into the blood and are responsible for chronic effects including cardiovascular disease, according to respiratory physician Louis Irving. He goes on to say that large particles lodge in the lung and can cause effects such as cancer, asthma, and chronic respiratory disease. (Source: permaculturenews.org)
Air pollution is particularly damaging to children and young people. The negative impacts of air pollution on a young person can affect everything from environmental allergies to breathing issues such as asthma, to a child’s body mass index, according to researchers at the University of Calgary. At least one study showed that cognitive development was less in children that went to schools in areas with high traffic-related pollution, said Stefania Bertazzon and Rizwan Shahid of the Geography of Health and GIS Analysis research group at the O’Brien Institute for Public Health in the Cumming School of Medicine. (Source: Global News, 2016.)
Pollution solution:
But here's the good news! Though we live near downtown and Memorial Drive, putting us at risk for air pollution, we can mitigate this effect by increasing the tree cover and diversity of our green space.
According to research into urban food forests developed in Peterboro Ontario, there are many advantages to permaculture and polyculture green spaces when it comes to air pollution. It is well documented that plants can take up gaseous pollutants, as well as reducing particulate matter suspended in the air, which sticks to plant surfaces (Currie and Bass, 2008). Some of the particulates are absorbed into the plant, although most of them just stick to the surface and are washed away by rainwater to the soil below (Currie and Bass, 2008). This prevents us from breathing them into our lungs.
Urban trees and other vegetation can also reduce contaminants making it to water bodies, such as rivers (Smith et al., 2013). Plants can prevent sediment, as well as other contaminant loading of rivers (such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and other pollutants) (Smith et al., 2013). As a community located close to the river that is also our drinking-water source, this could be a Calgary-wide advantage to permaculture development at our co-op.
One of the beautiful and most important aspects of permaculture is that, unlike typical agriculture, it embraces the planting and tending of trees—and trees are pollution-absorbing powerhouses! According to the USDA Forest Service, tree transpiration and tree canopies affect air temperature, radiation absorption, heat storage, wind speed and relative humidity, and these changes in local meteorology can alter pollution concentrations in urban areas. Reduced air temperature due to trees can also improve air quality because the emission of many pollutants and/or ozone-forming chemicals are temperature-dependent.
As a final note that I think is significant and exciting, here's an example of trees used on a large scale to decrease air pollution: in 1994, trees in New York City removed an estimated 1,821 metric tons of air pollution. This had an estimated value to society of $9.5 million, in reduced health care costs and other benefits. Perhaps, by decreasing our grass monoculture in favour of more plant diversity, we at the co-op could experience this type of well-being in our little community too!
Permaculture Potential #2: Water Management
Submitted by Debbie Willis on behalf of the Grounds Committee
Permaculture Potential #2: Water Management
Welcome to Permaculture Potential! This is a column from the Grounds Committee; we are excited to help educate co-op members (and ourselves!) about permacultures principles and techniques, with the eventual aim of proposing more permaculture projects to membership. This week we're talking about something that has been on many of our mind's lately, as our sidewalks cover with ice and Sunnyhill Lane fills with puddles: water management.
What is water management, permaculture-style?
Permaculture always focuses on whole systems, and manages inputs and outputs in a way that ensures the health of the whole ecosystem. In permaculture, water is optimally used while respecting the overall health of the watershed. We must always be mindful that water is an essential resource.
At Sunnyhill, we have issues with water on pathways and flooding in the common area and so we on the Grounds and Planning and Development committees feel that it is worthwhile to explore the possibility of managing and using this plentiful resource—wonderful water—in ways that could be productive and beautiful for every member of the co-op. These are all dreams for now; I want to stress that we don't yet have concrete plans or detailed knowledge of what might be possible at the co-op. But in the name of education, I want to give you a general sense of how permaculture approaches an abundance of water like we are fortunate to have at Sunnyhill.
Two approaches:
There are two basic strategies of water conservation and management on a permaculture property: storing water in the soil and diverting surface water to dams, ponds and/or tanks for later use.
First we want to slow, spread, and sink water as it falls from the sky into the soil.
Following this, the secondary goal, as Ben Falk writes in Resilient Farm Homestead, are to: capture as much water as is reasonably possible, store that water for dry periods, and distribute that water when necessary across the site.
1) Let's talk about the first objective: slowing and sinking water. We want to disperse the flow of water so it can infiltrate into soil, turning runoff into soak-in. Essentially, we want to make the water stroll, not run, through the landscape and for this we must shape the land in a way that facilitates getting water into the ground and storing it there. In permaculture, one harvests water in this way by directing it through terraces, seasonal rain gardens and ponds, water-infiltration swales, slow moving waterways, and dry creeks. Slowing and sinking the water allows it to feed trees and plants, produce food, and create lush, self-sustaining landscapes appropriate for leisure—children playing, adults sitting under the shade of trees, green-thumbs who want more space to garden.
See below for an image of swales:
(You can also see wonderful examples of swales in the film The Biggest Little Farm, where they make use of the technique in their orchard.)
2) Once you’ve made the best use of the fallen rainfall and stored that water in the soil, you’ll get runoff as the field capacity of soil is reached. (You might get this runoff straight away if your site’s watershed is in a bad shape.) At that point, you begin diverting and storing that water on the surface in ponds, rain barrels, and tanks. Please see below for an image of a permaculture pond:
Right now, many feel that we have a water "problem" at Sunnyhill. By using permaculture principles and design, we may be able to change that problem into an opportunity. This is something that the Grounds Committee and Planning and Development will be exploring to improve our sustainability score for funding as plans for the new-build unfold, with the aim of presenting a cogent and realistic plan to members.