Thorold Indigenous Unity Garden

06/14/2026

06/13/2026

Before they flower, foxglove and comfrey put up the same soft green leaves in the same garden bed. One becomes a gentle herbal tea. The other holds the same compound used in heart medicine — and a few leaves can put an adult in the hospital.

Comfrey is the leaf herbalists have steeped for generations. Foxglove is where digoxin comes from, and the whole plant stays potent even after it dries. The mix-up happens at the leaf stage, before foxglove raises its tall speckled bells.

🌿 Three differences, three seconds:
- The leaf edge — comfrey leaves are smooth along the margin. Foxglove leaves are finely toothed all the way around.
- The surface — foxglove leaves are deeply net-veined and slightly wrinkled, grey-green and velvety. Comfrey is smoother with one strong central rib.
- The stem — comfrey leaves run down the stem in thin wings. Foxglove leaves sit in a flat ground rosette and don't.

🐾 The confusion usually happens before the flowers open, so read the leaf rather than the spot where you think you planted things. Because foxglove keeps its strength dried, keep an unknown leaf out of the teapot and the salad bowl, and wash your hands after handling either plant. Once the flowers arrive, foxglove gives itself away — tall one-sided spikes of speckled tubular bells.

Read the edge of the leaf before anything reaches the kettle 🌿

06/09/2026

Join us for our next Spring CommUnity Gardening Gathering this Saturday, June 13 from 10 AM – 12 PM at the Unity Garden.

This will be our last gardening gathering before Braiding Our Stories: Honouring Elder Albert on June 27, and there is still much to do as we prepare this special space with care and love. We hope many of our gardeners can come out to help us tend the garden, continue cultivating the sweetgrass, and get ready for this meaningful day.

We will also have sweetgrass to share for those who would like to bring some home, along with our ongoing seed exchange as another way of sharing and growing in commUnity.

As spring begins to lean into summer, the garden reminds us that tending is a year-round relationship, one rooted in care, reciprocity, and responsibility 🥰🪴🥰

Please dress for the weather and bring any gardening tools you may have. As always, everyone is welcome. We look forward to spending time together in friendship, gardening, songs, teachings, and care for Mother Earth.

06/08/2026

Our CommUnity Garden is thriving thanks to the tireless contributions of its gardeners, who have shown remarkable dedication and passion. We look forward to seeing you on

June 13th from 10-12p for our next gardening session.🦋🪴🦋

Natalie Rubyhill Jesse Smith Allison Bowman Kakekalanicks Michele-Elise Burnett City of Thorold

06/08/2026

Congratulations!! 🦋🥰🦋

Incredibly proud to share that last week, our team took home a bronze award for Influencer Campaign of the Year at the national Canadian Public Relations Society conference! Recieciving this award against such strong competition truly underscores the value, trust, and support our team has to create....

06/06/2026

The plantain w**d by the path — the one you almost pulled — had common buckeye caterpillars feeding on it last week. Most people have never connected that w**d to that butterfly.

The clover in the lawn brought bumble bees from morning to dusk. The serviceberries you didn't pick fed a flock of cedar waxwings in a single afternoon. The damp corner you ignored all spring now has a gray tree frog calling from it after dark.

🌿 The bed you didn't till still had ground beetles patrolling the soil surface — running down cutworms and eating w**d seeds in the dark. Tilling would have crushed them.

Six things left wild. Six species that showed up because of it. The plantain is the one most people would have pulled first — and it was feeding a butterfly nobody expected.

The yard came back. You made room 🐾

06/06/2026

Your invited June 27th 3-6pm
Honouring the Life of Elder Albert Choken

Thorold Indigenous Unity Garden
One Thorold

06/04/2026

So beautiful!

06/04/2026

June’s Strawberry Moon carries with it the sweetness of return.

It reminds us to give thanks for what has ripened, to reconnect where distance has grown, and to restore relations with one another and all our relations.

In this season, may we make space for gratitude, renewal, and the gentle work of drawing closer again.

Words to Walk With
Strawberry Moon carries the sweetness of return a time to give thanks, reconnect with care, and rekindle all our relations.