Ottawa is falling short on tree canopy targets. The community is taking matters into its own hands

It was a gusty, rainy, gray Saturday morning in early June for the launch of Ecology Ottawa’s Trees For Today program. 

Despite the weather, Ecology Ottawa’s nature organizer Phillipa MacDonald and her team of volunteers had set up their pop-up tent early in the morning in anticipation of the first tree giveaway of the new program, filling it with one- and two-gallon saplings of native tree and shrub species such as red maple, eastern white cedar, red cedar, nannyberry and wild plum.

Located in an empty parking lot across Montreal Road from the Vanier Community Association Building, the tree giveaway joined the annual Velo Fest X, allowing community members to learn more about the initiative while their children received bike safety training.

MacDonald said people were excited to get trees, particularly shrubs.

“There’s definitely a really large demand. There's an interest in the food and the shrubs we have, like nannyberry and wild plum, which are better suited for the dense urban environment,” said MacDonald. “We have red maple, red cedar and white cedar as well, and those are larger trees. We want those canopy species as well – they’re very beneficial for wildlife – but it’s trickier with the size.”

The program is, as William van Geest, executive director of Ecology Ottawa, describes, “a wraparound full-service approach to planting trees.”

A 2.0 version of a previous tree giveaway program by Ecology Ottawa, Trees for Today is funded indirectly through a partnership with the national charity Trees For Life, using money from the federal government’s now-defunct 2 Billion Trees program.