Blogs

Robert Christopher first planted a Freeman maple with LEAF in spring 2012. He was inspired again to add another fine-looking Freeman maple to his Toronto property in fall 2013. He added more beauty and biodiversity to his yard in spring and fall 2018 with three pagoda dogwoods and an Eastern white cedar. Because he takes excellent care of his trees and shrubs, you can see from the photos, things are thriving in his yard. Our Program Manager, Kim De Lallo, interviews Robert about his recurring support for LEAF.

This fall, our garden stewards spent a morning with Lillian Natalizio to learn how to properly harvest native plant seeds from our LEAF Learning Garden. Harvesting your own seed is a cost-efficient way to ensure your garden will have beautiful blooms year after year or to share seeds with friends and family. Here are the key tips we learned that day on how to harvest our own seeds.

We all know the benefits of having big, beautiful trees where we live. However, the unfortunate reality is that some communities miss out on these because their neighbourhoods lack trees. Recognizing the tremendous opportunity to increase canopy cover in the communities that would benefit the most, LEAF, Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC), City of Toronto Forestry and Park People have been trailblazing the way for equitable tree planting! With grants from the Toronto Parks and Trees Foundation, as well as TD Bank Group and the Arbor Day Foundation, the partners worked together with TCHC staff and tenants to plant 150 trees across 11 properties in Toronto.

In this year alone, over 7,000 square meters of park land have been naturalized by Richmond Hill community members. Throughout the spring and fall of 2019, LEAF, the City of Richmond Hill and The Regional Municipality of York have hosted five planting events in Meander Park. With the help of 480 community members, we have planted 1,350 native shrubs and trees.