by Laura McLeod and the Tree Team
We are fortunate to have a number of volunteers come forward to be Tree Ambassadors for our community. They will work with the City Urban Forestry and Parks programs to help increase the City tree canopy from 8.25% to at least 16%. Bridgeland-Riverside is one of the first pilot programs in the city, due to all the work we have been doing with the City to plant more trees here. The pilot is for two years but we are hoping it may be extended.
Our new tree ambassadors will build on the work done in 2021-22 to identify more places for trees to be planted on City land. One interesting innovation we will likely be looking at is the planting of “mini forests”, where trees and other native plants are planted together in a small area to mimic a real forest, rather than trees being planted in relative isolation. Much has been learned about how trees and plants share resources via fungal networks in the soil, improving survival, so this approach was developed in Japan and has been spreading globally. For more information, see greencommunitiescanada.org/programs/mini-forest/.
In addition to working on planting more trees, the ambassadors will be submitting 3-1-1 requests for assessment or pruning of existing City trees and meeting with the community to provide information and get input on tree needs. More information will be coming in the future as the ambassadors develop their plans. If you have suggestions for places to plant trees or mini forests on public lands, or education programs you would be interested in, please email us at [email protected].
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