The Botanical Garden in Kosice is close to the hearts of many of our colleagues, who participate in its improvement every year during the volunteer event Steelmakers for Košice. If you are one of them, or if you decide to help with work in this location for the first time, you are more than welcome.
This time, a new challenge awaits us – preparing the terrain for the creation of a wetland habitat, which botanists plan to build near the hives and the api house. After completion, the peat bog with a pond will become home to frost-resistant carnivorous plants such as the round-leaved sundew (Drosera rotundifolia), the purple saraquenia (Sarracenia purpurea), or the bubble tree (Utricularia):
Our task will be to excavate the terrain, move and process and rake the excavated topsoil. Useful helpers at this site will be spades, hoes, rakes and wheelbarrows. On the freshly modeled terrain, we will sow a seed mixture, which will create a brightly flowering meadow in a few weeks.
A second site will be created in a nearby small garden greenhouse, where, thanks to the casting of a new concrete area, we will create a growing space protected from the vagaries of external weather.
Just like last year, the largest group of volunteers will gather in a large greenhouse by the fountain. They will complete the preparation of the substrate for transplanting plants, fill pots and raised beds. Botanists will then grow useful crops in them.
Other volunteers will be able to participate in the treatment of wooden structures, information boards and park benches, some can weed out or restore the surface on park paths.
For botanists, our help is invaluable. Robert Gregorek, Deputy Director of the Botanical Garden of UPJŠ in Košice, says:
"As has become a tradition, with the help of your colleagues, we tend to do the types of work for which we do not have enough capacity. It will help us a lot that, thanks to your help, we will speed up the start of growing plants that need more time to grow. On the other hand, we will also focus on creating something new, valuable in the long term, which will be attractive to visitors and at the same time an amazing contribution to nature. The wetland habitat is a project, the first stage of which we will start thanks to you. I cordially invite my colleagues – steelworkers to our premises and I believe that they will take away not only a good feeling from the work done, but also the experience of a pleasantly spent day."
Registration for the event will be open on Tuesday 28th April.
Information about all activities during the May Volunteer Days, including contacts to coordinators, can be found here:
Volunteering - U. S. Steel Košice
