There’s more to growing a garden than just planting some flowers, giving them water and watching them bloom. This year, help your garden stand out by focusing on a specific element:

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of dirt in the spring. Here are five things you can do now to ensure a beautiful (and easy) garden in the spring.

Cattails are one of the most common and easily identifiable shoreline vegetation plants. With their long green leaves and hot-dog shaped brown flower spikes, cattails belong to the typha species. Cattails are commonly found growing in dense stands in areas with shallow water or along storm water retention basins (SRB).

Over the past 50 years, Qualico Communities has developed many new neighbourhoods in and around Winnipeg. Several years ago, we teamed up with Native Plant Solutions, a branch of Ducks Unlimited Canada, to raise the bar for environmental responsibility and evolve the landscaping practices in our communities, particularly regarding storm water runoff and retention, and parklands. The result has been integrated systems of native grasses, shoreline vegetation and wetlands, creating communities conducive to the cycles of nature and offering stunning natural landscapes for residents to enjoy.

The native grasses and wetlands in Oak Bluff West help create a healthier neighbourhood and offer stunning natural landscapes for residents to enjoy and offer a host of benefits:

• Require no watering or fertilizer and much less mowing
• Require little-to-no pesticide use
• Aid in reducing soil erosion due to wind or water
• Provide habitat and shelter for birds and animals
• Absorb carbon from the air and help purify the soil
• Provide texture and colour change with the seasons
• Not attractive to Canada Geese or gophers

Please note: native grasses in public areas should not be disturbed in any way.

February 13, 2014, Winnipeg, Manitoba - The Manitoba Region of the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) and Qualico Communities, Winnipeg are pleased to announce their new partnership, established to help protect Manitoba’s natural landscapes.