Tree Planting Project in Victoria Park, 2023 (Truro, Nova Scotia)

Our organization did quite a bit of tree planting work in Truro's Victoria Park in September 2022.  This work was completely funded by One Tree Planted, who was the lead organization on this project.  One Tree Planted is a wonderful organization that fundraises and supports the planting of trees all over the world.

Edit:  We also did several thousand trees of additional planting in the Fall of 2023, and then a much larger phase in 2024 which was sponsored by Forests Ontario / Forest Recovery Canada, but the rest of this blog post will talk about the 2022 phase.  For a link to the more recent work, read this post:

www.replant-environmental.blogspot.com/2024/11/tree-planting-in-victoria-park-truro.html

Let's continue reviewing our work in 2022:

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.  We got off to a very good start to the project in 2020, planting approximately fifteen thousand trees.  However, the project really started to have a major impact in 2021 (another thirty-five thousand trees) thanks to support and financial backing from One Tree Planted.

Our initial review in 2020 had indicated that there could be as many as fifty to sixty acres of open ground that were suitable for afforestation efforts.  That fall, we did our initial work around the trail heads up at the top of the park, for the first phase of what would obviously need to be a multi-year project.  Phase 2 in 2021 more than doubled our impact.  And this year's Phase 3 included the planting of 51,305 additional seedlings!!

The shaded areas in the graphic below illustrate some of the ground that was covered in the Fall of 2022:

 

In addition to those areas, we also planted a section further to the southeast (within the Lepper Watershed) which was impacted by insect damage.

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.

Phase 3 of this project (in 2022) was successful in most respects, although we had a major interruption in late September due to the landfall of Hurricane Fiona, which passed directly over central and eastern Nova Scotia.  We had originally planned to do some work in the Gorge areas of the Park on September 26th, but Fiona caused massive damage, closing the Park due to safety concerns.  We were able to get into the site later in the week to plant the seedlings, but we had to divert them to some of the areas outlined in the graphic above, rather than planting them throughout the Gorge as originally intended.  The hurricane also impacted our deciduous seedling availability, which was regrettable, as we had hoped to further increase the number of hardwoods.  Additional hardwoods will now have to wait for a future phase.  In the meantime, the Park continues to clean up damage and slowly re-open affected areas.  It may take more than a year before the entirety of the Park is assessed for cleanup needs.

Here are a few photos from our work in 2022:

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see more photos of our 2022 tree planting work at this site by visiting our public 2022 Planting Photos folder on Dropbox, then going into the "Victoria Park" sub-folder.

We'd like to thank Larry and the park staff for having us, Don from the Department of Lands & Forests for helping with logistics coordination, and especially One Tree Planted for being the Sponsor that made this project happen.

As mentioned, we also planted several thousand additional seedlings in the Fall of 2023, although the ongoing hurricane cleanup efforts precluded us from having a major presence for 2023.  We look forward to finishing what may be the final phase of our current work in the Park in the Fall of 2024.  After that, we'll probably give the seedlings a few years to grow, while doing regular survival surveys and health assessments to ensure that the new forests are off to a strong start.

Edit:  Here's a link to our blog post talking about our 2021 work, in case you want to review the earlier work that we did:

replant-environmental.blogspot.com/2021/10/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 at Acadien Village Provincial Park, in New Brunswick (2022)

Our organization did some tree planting work at Acadien Village Provincial Park this past September.  This work was funded entirely by the One Tree Planted organization as the Project Sponsor.

 

This provincial park is located in northeast New Brunswick, roughly halfway between Bathurst and Caraquet.  Here's an overview graphic, courtesy of Google Earth:

 

The approximate GPS coordinates at the site entrance are:  47.788523, -65.089054

 

Acadien Village Provincial Park is a wonderful historical site, where visitors can see 200 years of history.  The full Village is a tourism complex built around a 2.2km circuit bordered with historical buildings, all of which are inhabited by fully bilingual (Fr/En) guides who portray the daily lives of the Acadien people from 1770 to 1949.  The site features a fully-operational 19th century hotel, restaurants, shops, and cultural activities, and it is open each year from June to late September.

A bit of the planned planting for this particular project involved planting tree seedlings in a few small open areas, where the staff wanted to turn some of the under-utilized mowed areas into future mature stands of trees.  There were also a few unused larger fields which are also being converted to mature forest.  Building these forests will be important for carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation, and provides additional habitat for birds and wildlife.  In the two previously-mowed areas, it also allows the Park to better manage their budget for grounds maintenance (controlling the costs related to mowing the grass).  We also planted some trees in some of the thinner sections of semi-mature forest surrounding the site, to enhance the health of those areas.  Basically, several goals aligned with the work that we carried out.  The following graphic shows the approximate locations for the new seedlings:

 

In total, our planting team added 36,028 trees to the Park this year, completing all of the proposed planting areas!

Here are a few photos of the planting team in action:

 

 

 

 

This project went very smoothly.  We were able to complete the planned planting on all of the targeted areas within this park.  We expect to return at some point in the near future to add some additional hardwood seedlings to the same areas.  Naturally, we will also be making regular visits back to monitor the long-term growth and health of the planted trees.

We'd like to thank the staff at NB Parks (especially Josh & Sylvain) for helping make this project work, and again want to thank the One Tree Planted organization for being the sponsor that made this work possible.

You can see more photos of our 2022 tree planting work on this site by going to our public 2022 Planting Photos folder on Dropbox, then going into the "Acadien Village Provincial Park" sub-folder.

If you'd like to learn more about Acadien Village Provincial Park, visit their web page:

villagehistoriqueacadien.com

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 at the Luciphy East Bird Sanctuary (2022)

Here's a post to share some info about another one of our bird sanctuary projects.  Replant.ca Environmental did the tree planting work on this site in southeastern New Brunswick in September 2022.  The work was done at a site on the Luciphy Road.  The site is being turned into a bird sanctuary.  We call this the Luciphy East site because we also have a carbon sequestration project on Luciphy Road, just a bit further to the west.  All funding and support for this project was provided by One Tree Planted, which is an amazing organization that fundraises and supports the planting of trees on a global scale.

   

This site was formerly owned privately by a third party, and that landowner harvested the wood recently.  We were able to acquire the property after it was harvested, then designed a plan to turn it into a nature reserve (we will never allow it to be harvested again).  Based on the site characteristics, we decided that this particular property should be part of our group of bird sanctuary sites.

    

The GPS coordinates at the front of this site are:  45.97729, -64.22022

The primary purpose of this project was to create and support biodiversity and wildlife habitat.  A secondary purpose was to support climate stability through carbon sequestration.

This particular site was a prime opportunity to create another bird sanctuary, as it met all four of our main criteria for site selection:  (1) Excellent access to the edge of the property on public roads; (2) Not a complete clear-cut, so there is existing mature nesting habitat; (3) Suitable "moderate" size of between 10 and 50 acres (this particular site is approximately 39.0 acres); and (4) contains flowing water, which will attract and support a broader diversity of species.

In total, our team planted 24,558 trees on this site, with the majority consisting of a mix of red spruce, eastern white pine, and white pine.  Although the site already shows some evidence of natural regeneration of white birch, red maple, yellow birch, and other hardwoods, we plan to enhance the mix of deciduous species on this site in the near future, as availability permits.  Diverse forests are healthy forests.

Here are a few more photos taken during the planting of this project, which took place on three different dates during September of 2022:
 

 

 

 

 

 

We look forward to watching this site grow over the next several years, and will eventually open it up for public access.

Again, many thanks to the wonderful team at One Tree Planted - without their funding and support, this project never would have happened!

You can see several dozen additional photos of our work on this planting site by visiting our public 2022 Planting Photos folder on Dropbox (go into the "Luciphy East" sub-folder).

 

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 at the Upper Aboushagan Bird Sanctuary (2022)

Our organization did some environmental planting work in southeastern New Brunswick in September 2022.  The work was done on the Upper Aboushagan road, and the site is being turned into a bird sanctuary.  All funding and support for this project was provided by One Tree Planted, which is an amazing organization that fundraises and supports the planting of trees on a global scale.

  

This site was formerly owned privately by a third party, and that landowner harvested the wood recently.  We were able to acquire the property after it was harvested, then designed a plan to turn it into a permanent nature reserve (we will never allow it to be harvested again in the future).  Based on the site characteristics, we decided that this particular property should be part of our group of bird sanctuary sites.

  

The GPS coordinates of the front of this site are:  46.00661, -64.36474

The primary purpose of this project was to create and support biodiversity and wildlife habitat.  A secondary purpose was to support climate stability through carbon sequestration.

This particular site was a prime opportunity to create another bird sanctuary, as it met all four of our main criteria for site selection:  (1) Excellent access to the edge of the property on public roads; (2) Not a complete clear-cut, so there is existing mature nesting habitat; (3) Suitable "moderate" size of between 10 and 50 acres (this particular site is approximately 27.2 acres); and (4) contains flowing water, which will attract and support a broader diversity of species.

In total, our team planted 25,361 trees on this site, with the majority consisting of a mix of red spruce, eastern white pine, and white pine.  Although the site already shows some evidence of natural regeneration of white birch, red maple, yellow birch, and other hardwoods, we plan to enhance the mix of deciduous species on this site in the near future, as availability permits.  Diverse forests are healthy forests.

Here are a few more photos taken during the planting of this project, which took place on six different dates during August and September of 2022:
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We look forward to watching this site grow over the next several years, and will eventually open it up for public access.

Again, many thanks to the wonderful team at One Tree Planted - without their funding and support, this project never would have happened!

You can see several dozen additional photos of our work on this planting site by visiting our public 2022 Planting Photos folder on Dropbox (go into the "Upper Aboushagan" sub-folder).

 

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.

 

Volunteer Day at the Walker Road Demonstration Forest (2022)

Our team hosted a volunteer day on September 3rd, 2022.  A corporate group from Moncton participated.  This event was organized by One Tree Planted (if your corporation would like to do something similar, you should reach out to them).

 

The morning in question was beautiful weather.  Sunny and cool - a perfect day for planting trees.

The group of volunteers arrived between 8:00am and 8:30am.  We gathered everyone together at the main parking area, and started with a quick site safety meeting.  Immediately after that, we talked for quite a while about the site characteristics, the existing trees and plants that the volunteers would encounter, the seedlings that we would be planting, and the future plans for the site.  After that, we moved into the wooded area for a demonstration on how to plant.

Once everyone had seen a demonstration of the best techniques to plant the seedlings, we moved back to load up our buckets with trees, and to ensure that everyone had a planting shovel.  We then spread out into a large five acre area to plant the seedlings.

The majority of the trees that were planted were eastern white pine (Pinus strobus). 

 

The area that was planted was one that had been thinned significantly over the past few years.  The area originally contained a large number of unhealthy, rotten balsam fir.  This species tends to rot and die fairly early (40-50 years) instead of achieving true maturity, because the area is a bit too far to the southern edge of the range for that species.  We cleaned out a lot of the dead trees, and the goal was to replace them with trees that are most resilient in the face of expected future climate change.  Eastern white pine was a great species for that site, because there are very few of that type of tree on the site already, but the local ecology supports the growth of that tree.  Eastern white pine also grows to be very large at maturity, so it is an excellent choice in terms of carbon sequestration.  It is also a fairly shade tolerant tree, well-suited for growing up to augment the existing semi-mature forest cover.

Here are a few photos of the volunteers at work!

 

 

 

 

To see more photos from our various 2022 projects, visit our 2021 Planting Photos collection on Dropbox.

You can learn more about this particular planting site by visiting our Demonstration Forests page and finding the Walker Road Managed Forest.  Here's a drone overview of the site, taken in winter to better show the contrast.  The area that the volunteers covered is outlined in red.  You can see how the forest in that area is somewhat thin and in these areas, but our new trees will make it a lot healthier!

Altogether, our volunteers and Replant.ca Environmental mentoring team planted a total of three thousand trees that day.  Great work!  A big thanks to everyone who was involved.

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.