TAKING THE TIME
Seasons of Connection: Community Stewardship — OBSERVE
Sunday, October 18, 2026 | 12:00–3:00 PM

What can we learn when we slow down and pay attention to the world around us?

Join us for Taking the Time, a guided neighbourhood walk and gathering led by Nathan Binnema. Together we’ll practise phenology — paying attention to seasonal change in plants, animals, and the places we live — and consider what it offers us as a way of relating to the natural world.

We’ll begin with a conversation at the gazebo at Queen Mary Park Community League, then head out into the neighbourhood. Along the way we’ll notice what’s shifting around us and gather natural treasures. Back at the gazebo, we’ll share what we saw and what it brought up.

Returning to the same place again and again, with the aim of forging better relationships between species, is how new ways of seeing and knowing arrive.

Whether phenology is familiar to you or entirely new, you’re welcome to join the walk and the conversation.

Meet Nathan Binnema

Nathan Binnema is a Treaty 6 settler on amiskwaciy-waskahikan, colonially known as Edmonton. A lifelong resident of the city, he has been exploring his connection with nature here since childhood, mostly through informal observation and engagement.

In 2016–2017, Nathan was introduced to phenological engagement through Ryan First Diver’s Blackfoot Phenology course, completing a full solar cycle of immersion at a phenology site near Forest Heights. He has continued the practice since, and has been visiting a site in Mill Creek Ravine since September 2019.

He’ll share what that practice has taught him and invite participants to slow down, pay attention to seasonal change, and see their own neighbourhood differently.

Event details

• Date: Sunday, October 18, 2026
• Time: 12:00–3:00 PM
• Meeting point: Gazebo at Queen Mary Park Community League, Edmonton — view location on Google Maps
• Cost: Free

All ages and fitness levels welcome. Dress for the weather and bring your curiosity.

Taking the Time is part of Seasons of Connection: Community Stewardship, a series exploring how we observe change, take practical action, connect with our environment, and prepare to help shape the future we want to be part of.

Supported by the City of Edmonton Community Climate Adaptation Micro Grant.

TURF THE TURF
Seasons of Connection: Community Stewardship — ACT
Thursday, October 29, 2026 | 5:00–8:00 PM

Remove your lawn and cultivate a nature-inspired, climate-resilient yard, neighbourhood, and city.

Join master gardener and nature-inspired designer Dustin Bajer for a workshop and discussion on how to turf your turf, and build something that works better for people and for the places we live.

A conventional lawn asks a lot and gives back very little. We’ll look at what replaces it — planting that supports biodiversity, uses less water, feeds pollinators, and holds up better through drought and heat.

This is the session where observation turns into action. Practical changes you can make at a yard’s scale, and what happens when enough yards on a block make them.

Whether you have a yard, tend a garden, share a balcony, or are just curious, you’re welcome.

Meet Dustin Bajer

Dustin Bajer is an educator, urban farmer, writer and nature-inspired designer who believes cities are ecotones — places where human ingenuity and natural systems meet and produce abundance. Edmonton sits in Aspen Parkland, between prairie and boreal forest, and he takes that overlap as a working model for how a city might be built.

He started the Edmonton Guerrilla Gardeners in 2007, casting seed into back alleys, boulevards and vacant lots. At Jasper Place High School he built a courtyard food forest of more than eighty edible perennial species that fed the school cafeteria, and worked with students to design and run Canada’s first high school aquaponics system. In 2014 he partnered with the City of Edmonton’s Roots for Trees program to plant thousands of edible native plants in the river valley.

In 2021 he founded Shrubscriber, which brings together gardeners, schools and community groups to propagate and distribute trees toward a food-secure, biodiverse and climate-adapted Edmonton. He also founded BeeComm, a community for small-scale beekeepers, and has catalogued Edmonton’s heritage trees through the Alberta Tree Register. He received Edify’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2018 and the Edmonton Urban Forestry Award in 2021.

Event details

• Date: Thursday, October 29, 2026
• Time: 5:00–8:00 PM
• Location: Earth’s Refillery, 10831 95 Street NW, Edmonton, AB T5H 2E2
• Cost: Free

Come curious, bring your questions, and leave with ideas for the spaces around you.

Turf the Turf is part of Seasons of Connection: Community Stewardship, a series exploring how we observe change, take practical action, connect with our environment, and prepare to help shape the future we want to be part of.

Supported by the City of Edmonton Community Climate Adaptation Micro Grant.

LAND & SPIRIT
Seasons of Connection: Community Stewardship — CONNECT
Saturday, November 7, 2026 | 12:00–3:00 PM

Join us for Connecting Land and Spirit, a community-guided nature walk led by Maia Mudrić of Touch Grass Club.

By building relationships with people, places and nature, we begin to connect land and spirit as a shared community worth caring for.

We’ll begin at the gazebo at Queen Mary Park Community League before heading out into the neighbourhood. The walk centres on culture — how people have related to the land they live on, and what gets lost when those practices fade. Maia will share from her own Slavic heritage, including the tradition of wearing a red cord through the winter and tying it around the first bud to open in spring, leaving a piece of yourself behind in nature.

We’ll gather natural materials as we go, for building forest creatures to place back in the landscape — the same idea in reverse, bringing a piece of nature home with us.

Whether you spend a lot of time outdoors or are simply curious about getting closer to the natural world, you’re welcome here.

Meet Maia Mudrić

Maia Mudrić is an amateur astronomer on her way to becoming a naturalist. A passion for the stars and night sky spread, in her words, to the forests, prairies, rivers and the life within them. She grew up under rural skies where the Milky Way was another friend on late-night walks — and it shaped her, as friends do.

She loves showing people the wonders of Alberta’s biodiversity and the culture and connection people have with it, and her talks tend to return to policy and pollinators. It matters to her that people see how precious life is, and learn what they can do to protect and support it.

Maia has worked in science communications and non-profit work since 2018, and holds a BSc in Physics with a minor in Mathematics and a Certificate of Leadership from the University of Alberta. She founded Touch Grass Club in 2024.

About Touch Grass Club

Connecting urban dwellers to nature and one another. Touch Grass Club exists to reduce barriers for people across the Edmonton region to access nature and meet local experts, knowledge keepers, and community scientists focused on understanding our environment.

Event details

• Date: Saturday, November 7, 2026
• Time: 12:00–3:00 PM
• Meeting point: Gazebo at Queen Mary Park Community League, Edmonton
• Cost: Free

Dress for the weather and bring your curiosity. All are welcome.

Supported by the City of Edmonton Community Climate Adaptation Micro Grant.

ROOTS & RENEWAL
Seasons of Connection: Community Stewardship — PREPARE
Saturday, November 14, 2026 | 12:00–3:00 PM

What have we grown together, and how do we carry it into the next season?

Roots & Renewal closes the first season of Seasons of Connection. We’ll look back at what we noticed, what we did, and who we met — and decide together what’s worth continuing.

This is also where the forest creatures get built. Over the previous three walks we’ve been gathering natural materials; this afternoon we put them together and find places for them. And we’ll personalize the journals that have been carrying everyone’s observations through the series.

Preparing isn’t only about getting ready for what’s difficult. It’s choosing what to tend. We’ll talk about what this looked like, what we’d do differently, and what a second season could be — shaped by the people who showed up for the first.

Whether you came to every gathering or this is your first, you’re welcome.

Event details

• Date: Saturday, November 14, 2026
• Time: 12:00–3:00 PM
• Location: Earth’s Refillery, 10831 95 Street NW, Edmonton, AB T5H 2E2
• Cost: Free

Come ready to reflect, make something, and imagine what’s next.

Supported by the City of Edmonton Community Climate Adaptation Micro Grant.