Sheep mow the lawn of Montreal park
MONTREAL — With only a few bleats of protest, a flock of woolly, four-legged lawnmowers took a rare stroll through the streets of Montreal on Wednesday to take up their duties in a new city park.
The six ewes and four lambs were carefully herded along the sidewalk from one park to another with the help of shepherds and volunteers holding up orange barricades.
The 10 animals are providing environmentally friendly lawn maintenance and educational opportunities in three parks in the Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie borough this summer.
Marie-Ève Julien-Denis, one of the project’s organizers, said grazing animals provide a natural way to trim the grass and eradicate invasive plant species.
Unlike mechanical lawnmowers, “herbivores have the ability to eat invasive species like buckthorn and phragmites, and to uproot them so they don’t grow back,” she said.
Wednesday’s event was inspired by a European “transhumance,” in which livestock are moved from summer to winter pastures — an event often followed by a village celebration.
Led by a shepherd with a bucket of grain, Montreal’s sheep largely stayed within plastic mesh fencing held by volunteers during the kilometre-long walk down the sidewalk.
While the first-ever Montreal transhumance didn’t come close to the scale of the events in Europe, which can involve thousands of animals, Julien-Denis has high hopes for the little flock.
She said she hopes the project, titled Biquette à Montréal, could soon bring in more sheep to more parks, and eventually even produce cheese.