A group of volunteers in Saugeen Shores want you to know what invasive garlic mustard is and how to get rid of it.
They’ve been fighting the invasive plant species in the community and holding events to remove it from public spaces, but it’s a recurring problem, and they want your help.
Michelle Hunter and Rosa Payette made a presentation to council Monday night, noting most people can identify a dandelion, and they’re aiming to make people just as able to identify garlic mustard.
Hunter says, “It’s not just another weed. It has a negative effect on our forest ecosystems. It has no natural enemies in North America. It crowds out our native plants. It forms dense stands that out-compete our native wildflowers, tree seedlings, rare woodland species. This reduces our biodiversity and disrupts natural forest regeneration. once established, it can double every four years.”
She explains,”Garlic mustard reduces wildlife habitat. Many native insects and pollinators cannot use garlic mustard as a food source. This affects our native butterflies, ground nesting birds and small mammals. The result is a decline in ecosystem health and resilience.”
She says garlic mustard is now widespread across Central and Southern Ontario. “It can enter, establish itself and become the dominant plant in the forest understory in five to seven years.”
“It is everywhere. it’s in our municipality. We have garlic mustard present in our parks, our forest, probably your own backyard,” says Hunter, adding, “Each plant can produce hundreds to thousands of seeds which remain viable in the soil for five years. It’s spread by foot traffic on trails, pets and wildlife, contaminated soil and garden dumping.”
She says they initially identified it growing along the rail trail in 2022, and organized a group to pull it, but soon found it was all over the place. “We have garlic mustard present in our parks, our forests, probably your own backyard.” They initially focused on Beiner’s Bush, Woodland and Shipley Trails. “By 2024, we decided to focus mostly on Beiner’s Bush and Shipley as the number of volunteers was not sufficient to cover all of these areas.”
Speaking to Council, Hunter says municipalities can help with early detection and rapid response, map and monitor infestations, prioritize removal in high value natural areas, hand pulling before the seed sets in late spring and bagging and proper disposal (no composting) public education, awareness campaigns and volunteer removal events. To prevent the spread she recommends cleaning equipment after use and ensuring no one dumps yard waste into public lands.
Hunter says they’ve been working collaboratively with the Town, which has provided them with garbage bags and is also disposing of the bags.
“We have had limited success in attracting volunteers, and we believe if more people were aware of our campaign, we would see an increase in the number of volunteers which would in turn, help immensely in fighting this invasive species.”
They’re looking for more people in the community to get involved.
They have a Facebook page called Garlic Mustard Challenge of Saugeen Shores and there’s a chat group called Saugeen Shores Invasive Volunteers. She says they’ve had organized pulls weekly in starting in May for the past four years. They’re starting again this coming Monday from 1-3 p.m.
Volunteers pulling the garlic mustard as shown in presentation to council.