These installations encourage pollinators by providing an ecological link between the Parc Marcel-Laurin wooded area, the Cavendish-Raymond-Lasnier wooded area and Parc Philippe-Laheurte. Their construction was made possible in part thanks to Montréal’s participatory budget.

Details

The resulting green infrastructure includes the following features:

• A feeder forest made up of trees, shrubs and edible plants that provide food for local wildlife. This development is part of the “Zones nourricières écologiques” project of Montréal’s participatory budget involving four other borough and for which funding was announced in 2022.
• An educational route enabling the public to discover the interactions between fauna and flora, and to learn more about efforts to preserve biodiversity in urban environments.
• Information markers along the route detailing the various plant species and their ecological role and presenting the information interactively with images and illustrations to be accessible to young and old alike.

Announced in 2019, the Saint-Laurent Biodiversity Corridor is an abitious project that commits the Arrondissement to the long term. The first phase, completed in 2021, was located at the corner of Cavendish and Poirier boulevards. It involved the planting of 1,800 plants in medians and rights-of-way, including around 70 trees, 460 shrubs, 100 grasses and over 1,000 perennials. Several wildlife infrastructures have also been installed to encourage native fauna.

Ultimately, the corridor will cover some 450 hectares in industrial, commercial and residential areas, connecting existing biodiversity cores and enabling residents to enjoy a diverse natural environment while discovering the heritage, historical, cultural and artistic attractions of their community.

This first urban biodiversity corridor in Québec has already won two national awards for urban design and landscape architecture in 2020 and 2021. It also attracted the attention of international specialists when it was presented in China in November 2019 at the 5^th Wuhan Design Biennale.