Tree Planting in Victoria Park, Truro, Nova Scotia

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:

www.victoriaparktruro.ca

Victoria Park is the #1 rated attraction in Truro, and has over fifteen hundred very positive reviews on Google.

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark

www.replant-environmental.ca

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.

 

 

Tree Planting Project in Caribou Provincial Park, Nova Scotia

Our organization did some more tree planting work in Caribou-Munroes Island Provincial Park this past September (of 2021).  This work was funded by the Trees For Life organization.  You can learn more about them from their website at:  www.treesforlife.ca

 

This provincial park is located on the north shore of Nova Scotia, near Pictou.  Here's an overview graphic of eastern Canada, courtesy of Google Earth, which shows the location of the park:

 

This project was put together to repair some of the extensive damage that happened in the park in 2019 due to Hurricane Dorian.

Here's an aerial photo of the park, taken before the hurricane:

 

The hurricane hit on September 7th, 2019.  Here's another aerial photo, taken after the hurricane:

Damage within the park was extensive.  The park staff did an excellent job of cleaning up the mess, but the open spaces then invited some restoration work.

In 2020, we discussed our desire to assist with this work, and the park staff were very happy to accommodate.  The park foresters estimated that approximately fifteen acres (six hectares) of the core camping area within the park had been hit the hardest, with lesser damages elsewhere.  We decided that this project would be approached in multiple phases.  We would plant several thousand trees in the fall of 2020, and follow that up with a second larger phase of planting in the fall of 2021.

We commenced our work that fall (2020), initially funded by public donations.  We certainly got off to a good start that year, planting almost five thousand seedlings.  However, we knew that more trees still needed to be added, and the project really began to have a major impact in 2021 with the support of the Trees For Life organization.  The support that we received from them funded the planting of 9,458 more trees in 2021!!

The following graphic shows approximately where new seedlings have been added so far.  Some of the seedlings were planted in open areas where trees were lost to the hurricane, and others were scattered as an underplant under various sections of existing partial canopy:

 

Our species mix to date for this project has included a total of ten species.  We've planted four types of conifers (red spruce, eastern white pine, eastern larch, and a handful of black spruce seedlings).  We've also planted six species of deciduous hardwoods to date (white birch, yellow birch, sugar maple, red maple, mountain ash, and red oak).  When we return in 2022, we hope to have a few additional hardwood species that were not available to us in 2020 or 2021.  Our plan is to sprinkle those trees throughout the already-planted areas, to enhance the diversity.

Here's are a few photos from our work at Caribou in 2021:

 

 

  

 

The second phase of planting on this project went very smoothly.  We're looking forward to returning next year to wrap up the final phase of the restoration work.  The project is getting close to completion now, and the addition of a few more hardwood species will finish this project in 2022.

You can see more photos of our 2021 tree planting work in our public 2021 Planting Photos folder on Dropbox.

We'd like to thank the staff at the Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forestry for helping organize this project, and again to the Trees For Life organization for making this work possible.

You can see more photos of our 2021 tree planting work in our public 2021 Planting Photos folder on Dropbox.

 

If you'd like to learn more about Caribou-Munroes Island Provincial Park, visit their website:

parks.novascotia.ca/park/caribou-munroes-island

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark 

www.replant-environmental.ca

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.

 

Five Islands Provincial Park, Environmental Tree Planting Project

Our work at Five Islands Provincial Park has been a multi-year project.  This blog post was written as a review of our initial efforts in 2020.  We have an updated post about our 2021 work at this link.  However, if you're curious about the work that we did in 2020, please read on ...

 

Our organization did some tree planting work at the Five Islands Provincial Park this past September (2020).

This provincial park is located in north central Nova Scotia, on the north side of the Minas Basin.  This is on the south side of the arm that connects most of mainland Nova Scotia with New Brunswick.  The town of Truro is about an hour to the east.  Here's an overview graphic of eastern Canada, showing the location of this park:

This project was put together to initiate afforestation on some open areas, and to repair some of the extensive damage done by Hurricane Dorian in 2019.  This storm battered central Nova Scotia quite strongly, and was the costliest storm in history when it came to damages to the provincial power grid.

Damages within the park were not as bad as in some of Nova Scotia's other provincial parks.  However, since there were open areas in the park from previous insect damage, this park was a prime candidate for the planting of some new seedlings.  When we offered to assist with this work, the park staff were very happy to accommodate.

The park foresters estimated that a series of openings along the upper sides of Camping Area B would be amenable to the addition of seedlings.  We decided that this project would be approached in two phases.  We would plant several thousand trees in the fall of 2020, and follow that up with a second phase of planting in the fall of 2021 to complete the project.

Before our team arrived on site, we were given some maps outlining the approximate area that the foresters recommended we focus on.  For context, here is one of those maps:

The first day that we arrived on site was cool and somewhat overcast, with high humidity in the air.  We were given a tour of the area, and we spent some time with the local forester doing a final review of the areas which would be covered.  This project was completed over a three-day span.  The second day of planting was sunny with cloudy periods.  The final day was rainy.  While some people don't like to work in the rain, we always like to see our new seedlings getting watered right away.

The ground covered was generally a shallow slope, with a full cover of vegetation and a few existing juvenile conifers.  Here are two representative photos:

Our species mix for this project included a total of seven species.  We had three conifers (red spruce, eastern white pine, and eastern hemlock), and four species of deciduous hardwoods (sugar maple, red oak, mountain ash, and yellow birch).  We planted almost nine thousand trees in this park in 2020, and will double that number in 2021.

Here's a photo of Chris (the head forester at the park), examining some of our red oak stock:

Here's a photo of some of the sugar maple seedlings that we planted:

Here are a few more photos taken while working on this project, including the welcome sign at the front entrance, a photo of myself (Jonathan) getting ready to plant some trees, a tree with a large burl, and three photos taken down near the beach:

The first phase of planting on this project went very smoothly.  We're looking forward to returning during the fall of 2021 to finish the work!  A post about that work will be linked here in late 2021.

If you'd like to learn more about the Five Island Provincial Park, visit their web page:

parks.novascotia.ca/park/five-islands

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark

www.replant-environmental.ca

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.

Blomidon Provincial Park, Environmental Tree Planting Project

Our work at Blomidon provincial park has been a multi-year project.  This blog post was written as a review of our efforts in 2020.  We have an updated blog post about our 2021 work at this link.  However, if you're curious about the work that we did in 2020, please read on ...

 

Our organization did some tree planting work in Blomidon Provincial Park this past September (2020).  Here's a photo taken from the front end of the park, overlooking the waters of the Minas Basin in the Bay of Fundy:

 

 

 This provincial park is located slightly west of central Nova Scotia, in a very picturesque part of the province.  The park is located just north of Canning, and just 20km from the town of Wolfville (home to Acadia University).  It overlooks the highest tides in the world.  Here's an overview graphic showing the location of the park:

This project was initiated to repair some of the extensive damage done by Hurricane Dorian in 2019.

Here's a photo, taken coming into the park:

Dorian hit central Nova Scotia on September 7th, 2019.  Eighty percent of the residents of the province lost power, and in the aftermath, Dorian turned out to be tied for being the strongest hurricane in recorded history to have ever hit Atlantic Canada.  The destruction was widespread.

Damage within Blomidon Park was extensive.  The park staff did an excellent job of cleaning up the mess, but the open spaces that resulted invited some further restoration work.  We discussed our desire to assist with this work, and the park staff were very happy to accommodate.

The park foresters estimated that approximately five acres (two hectares) of the core camping area within the park had been hit the hardest.  In addition, there was another five acre section in front of the camping area that had been cleaned out several years earlier (due to an insect problem) and that area could also use more trees.  Beyond that, there were some other isolated areas that would also benefit from reforestation work.  We decided that this project would be approached in two phases.  We would start by planting several thousand seedlings in the fall of 2020, and follow that up with a second phase of planting in the fall of 2021 to complete the project.

Before our team arrived on site, we were given some maps outlining the approximate area that the foresters recommended we focus upon.  For context, here is one of those maps:

This photo shows two areas highlighted in red.  The section on the left is the older area that was damaged by insects.  Some trees had been planted in that area several years ago, but the coverage was sporadic and there was certainly room for more.  The section circled in red on the right side of that photo shows the main camping area, prior to the devastation by the hurricane.

The day that we arrived on site was sunny yet humid.  We were given a tour of the area, and we spent some time doing a final review of the areas which should be targeted as the highest priority for our seedlings.

Our species mix on the first phase of this project was very basic.  We only brought in two types of trees, red spruce and white pine, in order to start planting a base layer throughout the main camping area within the park.  Some of these trees were planted in open ground where the previous mature trees had been completely destroyed and removed.  Other seedlings were planted in partial understory adjacent to camp sites, which again had suffered some wind damage.  Red spruce and eastern white pine are both fairly shade tolerant, and represented a very suitable choice for phase one.

Here's a photo showing our tree trailer.  We brought a full load of five thousand trees to get the project started:

We prioritized the camping area, as already noted, to ensure that our base layer of red spruce and eastern white pine could be completed in 2020.  Once those areas were finished, we still had some trees left over, so we were able to plant part of the area that was damaged by insects several years ago.  That area has started to regenerate partially.  Some of the trees in that area had been planted, and others are the result of natural regeneration.  The trees and brush in this area were quite patchy.  In some parts, the trees were looking quite healthy and were taller than we were.  In many other places, we only found consistent brush up to our waist.  You can see some of the area that I'm referring to in the background of this photo:

The first phase of planting on this project went very smoothly.  We're looking forward to returning in 2021 to finish the work.  We expect to bring several deciduous (hardwood) species when we return.

If you'd like to learn more about Blomidon Provincial Park, visit their website:

parks.novascotia.ca/park/blomidon

 

Thanks for reading!

Jonathan Clark

www.replant-environmental.ca

 

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.

Caribou Provincial Park, Environmental Tree Planting Project

Our work in Caribou/Monroes Island Provincial Park has been a multi-year project.  This blog post was written as a review of our efforts in 2020.  We have an updated blog post about our 2021 work at this link.  However, if you're curious about the work that we did in 2020, please read on ...

 

Our organization did some tree planting work in Caribou-Munroes Island Provincial Park this past September (of 2020).

 

This provincial park is located on the north shore of Nova Scotia, near Pictou.  Here's an overview graphic of eastern Canada, showing the location of this park:

 

This project was put together to repair some of the extensive damage done by Hurricane Dorian in 2019.

Here's an aerial photo of the park, taken before the hurricane:

 

The hurricane hit on September 7th, 2019.  Here's another aerial photo, taken after the hurricane:

Damage within the park was extensive.  The park staff did an excellent job of cleaning up the mess, but the open spaces then invited some restoration work.  We discussed our desire to assist with this work, and the park staff were very happy to accommodate.

The park foresters estimated that approximately fifteen acres (six hectares) of the core camping area within the park had been hit the hardest, with lesser damages elsewhere.  We decided that this project would be approached in two phases.  We would plant several thousand trees in the fall of 2020, and follow that up with a second phase of planting in the fall of 2021 to complete the project.

Before our team arrived on site, we were given some maps outlining the approximate area that the foresters recommended we focus upon.  For context, here is one of them:

This photo was taken prior to the devastation by the hurricane.

The first day that we arrived on site was cool and clear, a crisp day in the middle of September.  We were given a tour of the area, and we spent some time doing a final review of the areas which should be targeted as the highest priority for new seedlings.

Our species mix for this project for 2020 included a total of eight species.  We had two conifers (red spruce and eastern white pine), and we had six species of deciduous hardwoods (white birch, yellow birch, sugar maple, red maple, mountain ash, and red oak).  We had also hoped to be able to plant some eastern hemlock in these areas, but due to a seedling shortage, we decided that the eastern hemlock could be added in a second sweep through the same areas in 2021.  When we return in 2021, we also expect that we will probably have some additional hardwood species that were not available to us in 2020.  If that's the case, we will be able to sprinkle those trees through the already-planted areas, to enhance the diversity.

Here's a photo showing our tree trailer.  We brought five thousand trees to get this project started:

Here's a photo showing one of the sugar maple seedlings (left) and a red maple seedling (right):

The first phase of planting on this project went very smoothly.  We're looking forward to returning in 2021 to finish the larger phase of the work that is needed.

If you'd like to learn more about Caribou-Munroes Island Provincial Park, visit their website:

parks.novascotia.ca/park/caribou-munroes-island

Thanks for reading!

- Jonathan Clark

www.replant-environmental.ca

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.