“The Homegrown National Park Project is an innovative effort to create the world’s first citizen-led urban green corridor. The David Suzuki Foundation project stretches traditional notions of urban green space to include private, public and institutional spaces and encourage residents to bring nature to places that can be quickly and inexpensively transformed—their yards, balconies, rooftops, streets and alleys. The project is, literally, homegrown. It’s led by local residents, empowered by an innovative distributed leadership model.

Each year, we recruit and train a team of two dozen Homegrown Park Rangers —volunteers who create new projects and events in public and private spaces and encourage people to plant native flowers, shrubs and trees in yards, alleys, balconies, schools, parks and institutions” (David Suzuki Foundation 2016b). “The David Suzuki Foundation’s #GotMilkweed campaign launched in Toronto in 2014 as part of the Homegrown National Park Project.

The campaign was in response to the rapid decline of migratory monarch butterflies and has provided milkweed plants to keen residents that want to help bring back the monarchs” (David Suzuki Foundation 2016a). In just two years, more than 2,000 households in the Homegrown National Park area planted milkweed, and in conjunction with the overall Homegrown National Park Project, over 15,000 nectar flowers were planted. The 2016 iteration of this project includes distribution of milkweed seed packages and sale of milkweed plants. The Got Milkweed program provides 5 tips for a butterfly garden and provides information about why milkweed is essential for the monarch population (David Suzuki Foundation 2016a).

• David Suzuki Foundation. 2016a. Got Milkweed 2016. https://homegrown.projexity.com/initiatives/289xbRGOTFC8sgXZ4-Y1QQ.
• David Suzuki Foundation. 2016b. The David Suzuki Foundation Presents: Homegrown National Park Project. 2016. https://homegrown.projexity.com/.

Keywords: gardening, habitat, partnerships, restoration, urban