#879: Emerald Awards: Ann Smreciu
The 2017 Emerald Award for Individual Commitment to the Environment honours native plant expert Ann Smreciu.
Not long after her student days, Ann took on a project at the Devonian Gardens to find native plants suitable for reclamation.
That launched her lifelong passion, career and business in finding and saving native seeds.
ANN SMRECIU: Well, in order to use any of these native plants for reclamation, we definitely had to go out into the wild and actually harvest our own seeds. And of course, not only did we harvest seeds, but we had to figure out to propogate them, and how to germinate them, and then grow them into plants so they could be used in reclamation. Or figure out how to actually get them into the soil so that we could direct seed them.
So a lot of our work has been actually going out and harvesting seeds, originally down in the southern part of the province. Out there with bags and buckets and good hiking boots and hopefully some good weather. And these days, of course, I’m doing a lot of harvest of berries in the northern part of the province. And we’re out there harvesting berries and fighting against the bears and the urge to eat them (the berries).
Ann Smreciu was also instrumental in establishing the Oilsands Vegetation Co-operative.
Thanks today to SYNCRUDE
Learn more at InnovationAnthology.com
I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
Guest
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Sponsor
Syncrude
Program Date: 2017-06-22