Category: Clean Up

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Spring in Harper Park

We’re still in the park, almost daily, watching the signs of spring emerge. Last week we did a big spring clean up: we pulled out over 25 pounds of trash, just in the trails along and east of Smiling Creek, from Highland to Harper. Lots of folks shared their thumbs-ups and thank you’s as we worked, which was awesome.

We took a break to notice the Pacific Trilliums in the park—a sure sign of Spring! These are special to the forest because they’re tricky to propogate and seeds take years to flower.

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Harperspark Anniversary

Two boys cleaning up a forest trail using garbage pickers.

It’s been three years since we joined Coquitlam’s Park Spark team! We haven’t updated this website often in the past three years, but we have been in Harper Park almost every day since becoming Park Sparks in March 2021 (being outside in nature is more fun than writing blog posts). Since we started cleaning up the park, lots of other families have joined us, so we’re now just cleaning the Northeastern sections of the park (from Highland up Rock Trail, across Flywheel and Harper Road, and down Smiling Creek Trail).

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It’s Official!

Me and my second cousins and my brother are in the pictures. We finally got our sign up!  Sooooooooo happy so it’s really a thing now: we are the caretakers of Harper Park!

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Trees

Since there isn’t much garbage to clean up (which is good) I thought I might talk about the trees in the park. The main ones are the Western Red Cedar and the Douglas Fir. There’s another one too, it’s a bit uncommon but you might find it if you look up at the leaves of the trees. It usually has bright green leaves and they won’t blend in with the other trees. Take a guess, let’s see if you’re right: it’s the big-leaf maple tree!

Now I’ll tell you about the stats of the trees. The Douglas fir is large to very large tree, with an average height of 20-60 meters. The Western red cedar has an average height of 30-53 meters. And lastly, the big-leaf maple has an average height of 9-21 meters. Pretty cool right? Here are some pictures that we took during the week, thanks for reading!

Glacial erratic in Harper Park
On top of the other glacial erratic in Harper Park (near the Smiling Creek bridge). Douglas firs, Western red cedars, and big leaf maples in the background.
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Park Spark Week 2

There was a lot of garbage this time so we decided we’d make another round next week but we already brought in 3 bags of garbage! Most of it was fast food garbage so it was probably teenagers who either forgot or did on purpose, i’m probably gonna say they just littered because there was a lot of garbage which is kind of annoying because people are trying to take care of trails but other people don’t even care so they just litter. There will be a lot less garbage next week because we picked most of it up this time. Next time if any teenager brings fast food to the woods they should bring a bag to put their garbage in.