Author: Beach United Church

As our 2025 gardening season comes to an end at Beach United, we wanted to share some photos and updates with our community! We will have one final Gardening Group meeting on Tuesday, September 23rd from 8am-10am before we take a break until Spring 2026. As always, anyone is welcome to drop in between those hours and volunteer with us.

Welcome Garden

Substantial work has been put into what we are now calling the “Welcome Garden” – the portion just north of the driveway into the parking lot.  

Previous plantings had been very successful – too successful!  The wild roses and Burning Bush Euonymus had overgrown their space and were proving both a sight line hazard for cars exiting the parking lot and crowding out other lower growth plants. 

First replacements put in last year (2024) had been trampled during fall and winter and had to be themselves replaced this spring, but only after first installing a decorative fence, for protection.
New additions include Northern Bush Honeysuckle- asters, goldenrod and Hoary Vervain – all of which are native plants that support native birds and insect life.

Also planted there are Columbine (for spring flowering), cone flowers (for summer colour) and ferns for low level greenery. 

We could plan to winter sow more plants for the Welcome Garden with the Sunday School again this year. Some ideas would be to add plants that like dry shade, like Hairy Beardtongue and Heart Leaved Asters. Cathy could supply the seeds, containers and soil. Each of the plants that we add to the Beach United Church garden provide food for the entire life-cycle of pollinators, so they have flowers for the adult butterfly to feed on, and are a host plant to butterfly larva. An example is milkweed, which feeds Monarch larva and its flowers feed all adult butterflies. Many native flowers and trees and shrubs are host plants to different butterfly and moth larva. Our goal is always to plant as many of these as possible to support biodiversity. 

Replanting the construction zone 

Last year, there was extensive construction work along the east wall of the church – although the construction crew attempted to minimize plant damage, a lot of plants in this area unavoidably suffered. 

We put in new plants including Hairy Beardtongue, Purple Coneflower, Pale Purple Coneflower, Gray Goldenrod, Zigzag Goldenrod, Wild Bergamot, Dense Blazing Star, Wild Columbine, Swamp Milkweed, Butterfly Milkweed and Scarlet Runner beans beside the lounge window. The Sunday School children winter-sowed most of the new plants at the New Year’s Day church service in 2023. 

Not requiring replacement – the Paw Paw tree first planted by Matt Canaran (which suffered some damage but is growing!) is now accompanied by a second Paw Paw tree to allow fertilization.  As mentioned elsewhere in the garden section of the website, these trees used to be native to Southern Ontario ,but have been much less common.  Restoration efforts of our native ecosystems, including planting Paw Paw trees, has resulted in the return of a previously common butterfly the Zebra Swallowtail butterfly that had not been seen in Ontario since 1896. It was spotted in High Park for the first time since 1896.The Paw Paw tree is the host plant for the Zebra Swallowtail larva. It is effectively the Zebra Swallowtail butterfly baby food; you need the baby food to get the adult butterflies. 

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Thank you so much for reading! For more information on our Gardening Group, please visit their section of our website. Below are photos from throughout our 2025 Gardening Season.