Our organization did quite a bit of tree planting work in Truro's Victoria Park in September 2024. This work was completely funded by Forests Canada, which was the lead organization on this project. Forests Canada (formerly Forests Ontario) is a wonderful organization that fundraises and supports the planting of trees all over our country.
Truro is located in central Nova Scotia, and is often referred to as "the hub of Nova Scotia." From Truro, highways branch out in all directions to other points within the province. Truro is a small town which has an official population of only about twelve thousand people, but when you count everyone within a fifteen minute drive of the town, the number is probably closer to fifty thousand. That may not sound like much to anyone who lives elsewhere in a dense urban area. But Truro also has something else rather special. It has a municipal park, called Victoria Park. And that park is over three thousand acres in size! The people of Truro are extremely lucky to have access to such a large and beautiful park, located right inside the town limits.
But exactly how big is three thousand acres? Well, to put it into perspective, New York City's famed Central Park is less than a thousand acres. And Central Park has its own police precinct (the 22nd) which polices the 58km of pedestrian trails found there. Victoria Park doesn't have its own precinct, but it definitely has an extensive trail network.
Here's an overview graphic of eastern Canada (courtesy of Google Earth), showing the location of Victoria Park:
When we originally contacted Victoria Park in 2020 to discuss the possibility of planting some trees there, we learned that there were several areas which could definitely benefit. There were a few sections where trees had been removed after being killed by insects. Also, the former municipal landfill (now decommissioned) was relatively barren. Although some parts of the topsoil cap over the landfill had already been replanted several years ago by the Scouts and other organizations, there was still a great deal of work to be done.
We started our work within the park that year, initially funded by public donations. However, we've worked in this park every year since 2020. Hurricane Fiona caused major damage to the park in 2022, so for 2023 and 2024, our focus was on adding trees to areas where the forests had been flattened by the hurricane.
Our work in 2024 focused on three main areas. We planted in the Gorge area first. That area had a couple of sections which were almost completely destroyed in the storm, so we planted high density to help bring those bare areas back to future forest cover. However, we also planted some additional seedlings (at much lower density) throughout parts of the Gorge area which were not heavily damaged, to enhance species diversity throughout the Gorge, and to improve long-term forest health.
In addition, there were two other large areas within the park that suffered major destruction, near the Wishing Well and the Vibert Trail. We were able to fill each of these areas with trees, and also plant in a small storm patch to the south of these two areas.
The blue shaded areas in the graphic below show the ground that was planted in the Fall of 2024 (green areas are sections that we planted in past years):
To date, we've been able to plant six types of conifers (red spruce, eastern white pine, black spruce, white spruce, Jack pine, and a small number of eastern larch) plus six deciduous species (white birch, yellow birch, sugar maple, red maple, mountain ash, and red oak) within the Park. Our team planted 50,971 trees in Victoria Park in 2024 alone, thanks to the funding from Forests Canada!
Here are a few photos from our work in 2024:
You can see more photos of our tree planting work at this site by visiting our Planting Photos folder on Dropbox, then going into the "2024 Planting Photos" folder, then into the "Victoria Park" sub-folder. Start here:
www.replant-environmental.ca/photos
We'd like to thank Scott Holman and the park staff for having us, Don Cameron from the Department of Lands & Forests for helping with logistics coordination, and especially Forests Canada for being the Sponsor that made this project happen.
Edit: Here are links to blog posts talking about some of our earlier work in this area, in case you want to review the earlier projects that we completed:
replant-environmental.blogspot.com/2021/10/tree-planting-project-in-victoria-park.html
replant-environmental.blogspot.com/2023/02/tree-planting-project-in-victoria-park.html
If you'd like to learn more about Truro's Victoria Park, visit their website:
Victoria Park is the #1 rated attraction in Truro, and has over fifteen hundred very positive reviews on Google.
Thanks for reading!
Replant.ca Environmental is a Canadian company that plants trees for carbon capture and builds community forests. We also plant trees in national, provincial, and municipal public parks to mitigate damage from wildfires, storms, insects, and forest diseases. We operate thanks to numerous small contributions from the general public, in addition to larger project sponsorships from businesses and corporations around the world. If you'd like to learn how to show your support, visit our donations page. Even if you aren't able to make a contribution, we very much appreciate when people are able to share our posts or our website link on social media, to help spread the word about the work that we're doing!
To learn more about the various species that we plant, visit the conifers page or the deciduous (hardwoods) page on our website. Thanks so much for your interest!
Incidentally, our organization is often seeking additional land for our carbon capture projects. Please visit this link if you might know of a recently-harvested property that we could rebuild into a permanent legacy forest.
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