Guide: Michael Wolfe, Eco-tours Coordinator for the Garden City Lands Coalition, is a conservation biologist and a teacher with Richmond School District. He has served (filling in for a year during a parental leave) as the district's Teacher Consultant for Environmental Sustainability and Science Education. Michael is the foremost expert on the way nature formed and cares for the Garden City Lands. He has explored the lands all his life but still finds something new on every tour.

What to wear and bring:

• Essential: Wear casual clothes, including durable waterproof boots and long pants.
• Optional: Suitable headwear and sunscreen are useful. Consider water, energy snack, and sunglasses.

Starting point: Main entrance on Garden City Road, as shown on this map (click here) and on the PARC map. Traveling north (toward the North Shore mountains) on Garden City Road, turn right (east) on the gravel driveway 250 metres north of Westminster Highway. If driving, you can park in the turn-around at the end of the driveway (with care not to block others or do damage.) Also, one can usually park on the east shoulder of Garden City Road near the main entrance while still being out of the way of bicycles, walkers, and traffic.

Time and length: From 2:00 p.m., up to about 90 minutes at a leisurely pace.

Weather: It's useful to check the Richmond weather (click here) as the tour day approaches, but our tours are "rain or shine." (The one exception would be a thunderstorm.) Weather conditions are one fun aspect of the different experience on each tour.

Ability to participate: It helps if participants are reasonably fit, but the age range has been from eleven months old to late seventies. The lands were mowed in the fall, and it will still be easy enough to get around (with care, following Michael's advice to avoid causing damage).

Notes: No reservations required. Please come a few minutes early so as to start with the group.

Benefits: Appreciate the Garden City Lands first-hand. Learn about the diversity of life on the lands. Gain experiential knowledge. Help form knowledge about how the community needs to act. Share in a fun time. And celebrate our past success in conservation and our opportunity for future success through restoration.

Where's the New Birth?

Michael will help us to see the reawakening and rebirth all around, with particular emphasis on the nesting birds such as the red-winged blackbirds that especially thrive in the southwest corner of the lands.

If the visionary citizens share what's best in what they see in the future Garden City Lands, the positive approach will lead to consensus. That's predictable  because it has been happening for the past four years within the coalition, the citizens who strove to protect the lands in the ALR for appropriate uses. There could have been discord, but they chose harmony. The hope is that Richmond City Council will recognize that tremendous asset and leverage it. By participating in the Harmony Tour, you can prepare to contribute your own informed vision.

Other questions: Email GardenCityLands@shaw.ca with "tour" in the subject line.

PARC─Parkland for Agriculture, Recreation, and Conservation

The PARC map of the lands (below) is based on what nature tells us with the lands' differing soils, elevation, and ecology, among other realities. It illustrates a way of thinking, which involves paying attention to what the lands are telling us in the context of the best available expertise, the community thinking expressed in the extensive public consultation, and their status as Richmond parkland in the ALR. On the PARC tour, Michael referred to the PARC map and the surroundings to show how different parts of the lands lend themselves best to particular uses that complement each other. He will probably include that approach again.

To a significant extent, the PARC map is based on Michael's observations and interpretation of the Lands. In preparation for the tour (or to partially replace the tour if you can't come), you will find it very helpful to read "Listening to the Lands = PARC (click here)" on the Richmond's Garden City Lands blog.

Nature as Michael's co-guide: Nature cultivated Lulu Island first. Michael Wolfe often points out native species that nature has nurtured on the Garden City Lands for centuries and even millennia. When humans arrived, many of those species provided them with food, warmth, and healing. We can cooperate with nature to restore the natural balance that will enable those species to thrive again. At the same time, we can help the area to regain its vigour as one of the green "lungs of the city." And much more.

Reminder: The Garden City Lands Coalition is a community of people who want to steward the Garden City lands in the Agricultural Land Reserve for agricultural, ecological and open-land park uses for community wellness. We cooperate toward that goal as a public service for the citizens of Richmond, as well as the region, the province, and the world.