Hamilton’s Pipeline Trail “liberated a past treasure”

Thestar.com
July 15, 2018
Jon Wells

re already being sown with kids who are growing up on the Pipeline Trail.

Near the Pollinator Paradise garden, a toddler named Warren plays with his mom, Kyla Makela. He’s already a big fan of the trail, she says.

The family moved to Hamilton from Toronto, she said, in search of affordable living and a tight-knit community. When she saw the house on Park Row North shaded by a big maple and hard against a historic trail, she and her husband were sold.

“There is a constant stream of people on it, the dog walkers and cyclists, and the green space is lovely. It seems like people use the trail even when it’s not the most direct route to where they’re going.”

Makela loves the big garden, and the ecological diversity it encourages. She works for the conservation group Bird Studies Canada and spotted a northern flicker recently in her backyard; a bird from the woodpecker family that, while not entirely rare, is not often found this far south.

When Seidl and Bev Wagar knocked on her door recently and asked if they could use her backyard hose to help water the garden, she was happy to help.

A couple of mornings ago, Wagar --the spirit behind the pollinator paradise, said Seidl --added a new plant, an Eastern Bluestar. It bumped the count up to nearly 30 species, from Elderberry to Monarda (“the bee bomb”) and Virginia Mountain Mint.

The garden can be viewed up close if you walk through it on a tiny path of wood chips. Or, you can sit on a bench in the shade of a blue spruce and watch tiny birds zipping in and out, bees buzzing.

Plants bob and dance from the activity, life pulsing --just as it does in the water that still courses through that original 19th century Scottish cast iron pipe, every day, four feet under your feet, with the life blood from the lake.