Blogs

A little girl named Sophia, along with her community, needs to raise $430,000 to rescue and preserve a heritage red oak tree that is estimated to be over 250-years-old by December 12, 2020.

Throughout the month of October, LEAF staff and volunteers worked together to naturalize 5,650 square meters of public land in the City of Richmond Hill. Together, we planted over 1,600 native trees and shrubs! It’s a great start to our bigger goal of planting 6,000 native trees and shrubs by 2022 with support from Ontario Power Generation’s Regional Biodiversity Program. Sites will be selected across York and Durham Regions. Below, we share information on our naturalization efforts and photos capturing our activities.

COVID-19 may have stopped us from meeting in-person, but it sparked new ways of connecting and engaging with each other. To celebrate National Tree Day on September 23, 2020, we hosted a free virtual tree tour of Lake Wilcox Park, located in Richmond Hill.

Planting native trees and shrubs on public lands has many long-term benefits, including increasing essential habitat for local wildlife. To ensure our efforts are successful, we’ll be monitoring the impact of our tree planting events on plant biodiversity over time. Thanks to support from Ontario Power Generation’s Regional Biodiversity Program, we can assess each site as it establishes itself and adaptively improve our future naturalization efforts when needed.