Royalwood an outdoor classroom

Royalwood has even been used as an outdoor classroom for environmental studies by students from nearby school divisions. The green subdivision concept taking off in Winnipeg has already been tried in U.S. cities like Minneapolis and is spreading across Canada.

Native Plant Solutions will be submitting a plan with Winnipeg landscape architect Scatliff for a development in Saskatoon. He is also talking with major land developers in Quebec.

In Edmonton, Qualico is teaming up with a private company on its own greening venture.

Scatliff is even working on projects in rapidly industrializing China, where he is trying to persuade local developers to rely on native plants instead of imitating American cities.

“It’s a paradigm shift,” he says.

Winnipeg was the perfect place for Native Plant Solutions to start up, because in a slow-growth city, developers take their time with planning. In a rapidly expanding market like Calgary, the focus is on getting homes up as fast as possible, Scatliff says. Still, even with the new housing push, the City of Calgary has identified the values of wetland areas by developing an urban wetland policy and also incorporating educational wetlands into several developments over the years.

“Here, there’s time to think it through,” Scatliff says, adding that his company staff at Scatliff & Miller & Murray will good naturedly spar over who will get to work on the latest naturalized development because it is so much more satisfying than conventional design work.

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