October 28, 2020
Lam Tran
Tags: Tree Tour
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.
October 22, 2020
Brian Millward
Tags: stewardship
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.
October 19, 2020
Daniela Serodio
Tags: stewardship
This fall, LEAF staff and volunteers have begun planting native trees and shrubs in York Region as part of a larger, three-year project to increase biodiversity on public lands in York and Durham Regions. Among project activities are planting 6,000 native trees and shrubs, monitoring sites before and after planting and engaging local community members. These activities are made possible in part, thanks to support from Ontario Power Generation’s Regional Biodiversity Program.
October 09, 2020
Visitor (not verified)
If I asked you to close your eyes right now and picture a tree, what would it look like? Can you describe it: Its size, its shape and its leaves? My brain-tree looks like a pine, and there’s a very good reason for that. It’s also the secret reason that I wanted to join the Young Urban Forest Leaders (YUFL) Program. But to understand why my brain-tree is a pine, and why that made me want to spend a summer learning about urban forestry, I have to tell you a little story.
September 29, 2020
Daniela Serodio
LEAF offers over 50 native trees and shrubs through our Backyard Tree Planting Program. Clearly, we love native species! I already interviewed our Residential Planting Programs team to find their favourite species, now I turn to our Community Programs team to learn more about their top picks!
September 25, 2020
Jess Wilkin
What comes to mind when you think of pruning? For many people, it’s a topiary shrub clipped into an ornamental shape. Though we often think of pruning as an aesthetic practice, it actually serves a much wider purpose. Each pruning cut has the ability to change the growth pattern of a tree forever; making pruning young trees an essential practice in order to maintain health and encourage a strong structure as they mature.
September 23, 2020
Visitor (not verified)
Tags:
What do string, handy plant species identification tips and a clipboard have in common? These were some of the things Brian Millward, LEAF Stewardship Coordinator, and I needed when we visited future LEAF naturalization planting sites. We were establishing a baseline of species diversity found at each site in order to monitor the impact of LEAF stewardship activities.
September 23, 2020
Visitor (not verified)
Tags: Project Swallowtail
Though soft-stemmed flowering plants are common in pollinator gardens, trees and shrubs are just as important! Not only do many caterpillars depend (in part or completely) on the leaves of these plants for food, but the thousands of flowers they produce also feed butterflies, bees and other pollinators. Here are seven trees and shrubs you can plant this fall to create a pollinator-friendly garden.
September 09, 2020
Brian Millward
What is the most valuable part of being a volunteer Garden Steward? We posed this question to the dedicated volunteers that care for our Urban Forest Demonstration Gardens located outside of five TTC subway stations. For 10 years these green spaces have added a little bit of nature to the lives of local residents and commuters. None of this would have been possible without this passionate community of volunteers steadily working behind the scenes!
September 04, 2020
Lam Tran
Tags: Tree Tour
In recent months, online events have become the rule, rather than the exception. COVID-19 brought unimaginable changes to the way we all connect with each other and, to adapt, LEAF went virtual. In my journey to re-imagine how the in-person Wychwood Barns Park tree tour could be done online, new and exciting ways of engaging with people emerged.