Relocate, don't germinate: How Ottawa saves trees in the path of the LRT
Kieran Delamont, Ottawa Citizen
Updated: August 17, 2018
Most city infrastructure projects are, at first, destruction events: to build anything, you often have to remove what’s already there. Sometimes this is controversial, as when people are involved; other times, it is as simple as pushing dirt around.
So as plans for Phase 2 of the city’s major light rail project begin to take shape, a seemingly simple question arose: What do you do with the trees that are in the way of the planned route?
A host of politicians — Mayor Jim Watson, Carleton MPP Goldie Ghamari, Ottawa West—Nepean MP Anita Vandenbeld — descended upon Woodroffe Park on Friday to announce that, with the help of a $25,000 grant from Tree Canada, the city was able to transplant 50 trees from Byron Linear Park, in Westboro, and replant them at a handful of parks in the city’s west end, including Woodroffe.
It may look complicated — in part because of the tree spade, a giant Transformer-esque machine they use to do it — but really it isn’t. Ken Stevens, president of Manotick Tree Movers, said tree transplanting is essentially a three-step process that starts with digging a hole.
“We dig the hole, we go get the tree and bring it right to the hole. We put it right in, and it fits perfectly,” said Stevens.
Specialized equipment like the tree spade makes the process easier, although there are limitations to their machinery, said Stevens, which can handle trees of up to nine inches in diameter. Any bigger, and more engineering-heavy solutions would be needed.
Ideally, after a couple of growing seasons, a thriving transplanted tree looks no different than any other tree on the property. The name of the game, for tree transplanting, is to see the tree thrive, not just survive.
It’s a surprisingly simple process that doesn’t happen often, according to Marie-Paule Godin, operations manager with Tree Canada.
“It’s not that common, but it is becoming a bit more common now, because there’s more research and studies showing you can do it efficiently,” she said. But cities, with tight margins and budget constraints, often depend on grants like the one announced on Friday to be able to do it.
“Funding for cities with their green canopies is very restricted, because they don’t get any funding from the provincial or federal government to help them,” she said. “Municipalities are alone with their tax base to do everything with trees.”
Why move a tree in the first place? Often, said Evelyn Stevens, manager of Manotick Tree Movers, it’s for sentimental reasons: families want to bring trees with them, vestiges of the place they used to be but are no longer.
When it comes to city projects like this, Ken Stevens takes a more utilitarian tack: relocating trees that might otherwise be destroyed is just cheaper.
“You’re saving time and money. Some of the trees we relocated would have costed $2,000 to purchase … when we’re moving it with the tree spade, it’s only $100 in some cases,” he said.
For both of them, though, it comes down to a pretty simple question: why kill a tree, if you don’t absolutely have to?
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local...-save-a-tree-2
Prev
Linear Mode
