Fish Creek Grassland Restoration Workshop
June 15, 2026
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Fish Creek Provincial Park is one of the most well-known and loved parks in the City of Calgary. Covering roughly 13.5 km2, and surrounded by the City of Calgary, it is the second-largest urban park in Canada. Visitors are common, strolling or biking along trails, watching for birds and other animals, and escaping from the city.
But despite it being in the grassland ecoregion, there is very little grassland.
Most of Fish Creek once belonged to the Bow Valley Ranche, and much of it was cultivated. Smooth brome, Kentucky bluegrass, and other introduced species are common throughout the park, except where trees and shrubs have taken over. Native grassland is estimated to cover less than 0.1 percent of the park.
Now, Friends of Fish Creek is working to change that. Friends of Fish Creek is an independent organization that manages and conserves the park. Lately, they’ve been working on native grassland restoration.
AWA was one of several grassland restoration organizations invited to learn more about this work.
Standing in the open fields at the south end of the park, we heard about the work it took to restore just a small section of grassland. First, the introduced species needed to be suppressed, or the native species would have no chance of establishing. For smaller plots, introduced grasses could be smothered under plastic, where the heat would eventually kill the plant. Glyphosates and pesticides could be used on larger plots, with the wilted plants providing good cover for seeding. In some cases, plugs helped plants to establish faster, and with a better chance of survival.
Watering should be limited, we were warned. Native plants were adapted to survive on less water, so aside from the initial stages, water would only feed into the introduced grasses. Forbs also needed to be included, as too much grass cover often prevented their growth.
We moved on, touring restoration sites with a growing number of native species. We spoke also of seed preparation, and the difficulties of collecting and working with native species. In many cases, seed still needed to be collected by hand, then cold stratified and scarified to induce germination. When seeding, we were told, they recommended mixing the seeds with oats, to dilute the mixture and ensure a greater area was covered. There was discussion about more commercial production, including the use of production rows in crop fields, and the challenges of sourcing local seed.
We finished the day by working in the Listening Garden, a new project intended to introduce visitors to the plants of Alberta. The aim is to eventually plant representative communities, and use these as examples for education, or to aid Indigenous guides in their explanations.
For now, it was only stretches of dirt covered with sand. So, under a warm sun, the first hints of rain in the distance, we seeded the garden, and planted plugs of golden bean, lupine, and other plants, contributing to returning a little more of the ancient grassland.
Little by little, we are seeing the native prairies return to this part of Fish Creek Provincial Park.