City of Estevan parks manager Rod March is getting the City of Estevan ready to enter the nationwide Communities in Bloom beautification competition.
“Communities in Bloom has been around for quite some time … and it’s just about civic pride,” said March. “We’re trying to do things a little better, obviously, and we’ve got a lot of work to do. We know that.”
This year is a preparation year for Estevan. Next year they hope to be in the non-competitive friends category, in which the city will be judged by its peers.
“It’s kind of a litmus test as to how I’m doing in the city, so we can show them what we’re doing as far as beautifying the city,” said March. “I’m trying to get together a lot of different media things that we can get on our website for awareness around civic pride and awareness around our urban forest.”
Then they plan to take the next step in 2018. There would be three different categories for the city to enter: the competitive division, the novice program for those who haven’t been involved in several years and the evaluated friends category.
March was approached by the Saskatchewan Parks and Recreation Association last year about entering Communities in Bloom. He was very interested in their presentation, but didn’t want to enter too soon.
Entries are judged on several criteria, including tidiness, environmental awareness, heritage and level of community involvement.
“The reason I want to get into this, of course, is it creates access for us to a lot more grants, so that we can go after different grant for different things to do around the city for beautification,” said March.
Estevan’s urban forest is one area that needs improvement. He’s working on a management strategy that will help replace trees that are dying or have been taken down.
“Our parks need more trees, more vegetation, more shrubbery and more greenery,” said March. “Around the city itself, I think (roads and drainage manager) Norm Mack has been doing an awesome job at keeping things clean. We just need to spruce it up more, similar to the medians.”
More awareness is also needed regarding some of the invasive species that exist in the city.
Estevan does have a lot of greenspaces, but they are fragmented.
“The strength is that we do have lots of areas out there that we could develop, and I’m trying to present to council focal points that we could really spruce up along main corridors,” said March.
As part of Estevan’s preparations for Communities in Bloom, the city has a geographic information system that was brought in last year, which will give March an indication on how much is being spent per person per hectare of greenspace, or how much greenspace Estevan has per person. He is in the process of compiling that information.
Communities in Bloom makes a big difference in civic pride, he said, and it also allows communities to network and discuss their efforts on urban forests, invasive species and the environment.
“We’re building this community. It’s going to look really good,” said March.
