THUNDER BAY — The growing season is nearly started, and the City of Thunder Bay is reminding residents to declare boulevard gardens.
The city’s new boulevard garden and maintenance bylaw was recently passed back in February, requiring homeowners, property owners and tenants to complete a declaration and acknowledgement form before tilling their boulevard gardens. This is the first spring since the new bylaw came into effect.
Danielle Thom, Climate Action Specialist, says the process is “pretty easy.”
“We've tried to make it as streamlined as possible, so we hope folks find it user-friendly,” said Thom.
Residents are to click on the portal to sign their acknowledgement form.
Thom said the form is part of the city’s integrated digital strategy, which means residents will find the form with the building services, housing services, and permitting services.
She said paper forms are also available on the first floor of City Hall.
Thom said the form allows the city to keep track of where gardens are and contact gardeners before any planned construction work or if there is a complaint made against the homeowner.
“The only time that we're really gonna go into the database is to check how many people are there, and if there's any disputes between neighbours or anything like that or there's any complaints about the boulevard garden, that's where we're gonna be able to go look it up by address, and then just see who to call first. There's like a continuum of enforcement, so we’re never gonna come in and slap any sort of fines on you, at all. The first step is chatting, so that just gives us an added need to contact whoever has started planting that boulevard garden.
The city has provided all the information residents will need about the new bylaw, which can be found on the city’s website.
The boulevard garden landing page will tell residents the specific regulations, like plant heights and setbacks.
“We tried to make it comprehensive. We wanna make it easy. Signing up should not be the hard part of this. The harder part is maintaining your garden, but it isn't even that hard. We're hoping it'll bring people a lot of joy,” said Thom.
