Trees Please

Environment Hamilton and the Hamilton Naturalists' Club would like to thank so many people / organizations for a successful 2021!

A big thanks to our volunteers who helped us collect data, drop off flyers, spread the word, attend our events, plant trees.  It was a great year to see people (safely) face to face and work together to make Trees Please a success! 

Thanks to everyone who requested and planted a tree on their own property.  We need to get more trees into the ground and planting the right tree in the right place is a great way to increase our urban tree canopy coverage. 

Thanks to our partners: City of Hamilton / Forestry Division for their support, we have been planting trees through our Community Tree Plantings consistently since 2016 and we are grateful for their partnership.

Thanks to our experts: Charlie Briggs and Stefan Weber who lead informative, interesting workshops and are so generous in sharing their knowledge.  And Rhoda deJonge and Kyle McLoughlin, our tree experts at our virtual meeting who thoughtfully answered our tree related questions.

A big thanks to our funders - thank you for believing in us!
Clean Air Hamilton
Trees for Life
Natural Resources of Canada
Royal Bank of Canada / Tech for Nature
TD Bank / Friends of the Environment 
Trees Canada

Last but not least, a BIG thanks to everyone who loves and understands the value of trees!  
We will continue to increase the number of trees in Hamilton, focus on air quality, highlight the benefits of trees and to celebrate them.  
Trees Please is a group effort and we can't do all of that without help!

We can't wait for 2022!



(Image: Two red chairs under a tree. Content: "Talk Tree To Me" and link to recording of event)

Click here for the recording of our Talk Tree to Me: Conversation with Two Tree Experts that was held on November 25th, 2021.


We would like to thank our funders for their support for our Trees Please project in 2021. 
We couldn't have completed what we did without their support!  We are grateful!

 

 


Our native tree giveaway was a great success.  
Our City has 1337 MORE native trees and shrubs on private lands.  
With our urban tree canopy coverage at only 21.2%, we are a long ways off from the target of 40%.  So every newly planted tree / shrub helps.  And we all know, that privately owned trees tend to fare better than their street tree counterparts so it all helps improve our canopy coverage. 


Some highlights include: 

- the most requested was the Paper Birch followed by the Redbuds.
- 146 Bush Honeysuckles were requested.  They were our smallest option and we love this because we want the right tree / shrub in the right place.
- out of 1337 requests, 483 were for the trees that would grow larger than 20+ metres (Red Oaks, Paper Birch and Sugar Maples) 
We would like to thank so many people and organizations!  

We would like to thank the Hamilton Naturalists' Club for their partnership in our Trees Please project / Free Tree Giveaway.  It took all of us running at full capacity to make this giveaway happen.

Special thanks to our funders, Trees for Life and Natural Resources Canada

A BIG thanks to folks who helped us secure our 3 pick up locations: McMaster Innovation Park, Westmount Recreation Centre and Sam Manson Park.  Thanks to Jonathan H, Scott B, Janine G, Deb M.

Thanks to our volunteers who helped us distribute flyers and who helped us move 400+ trees at each pick up location.  Special thanks to Patti M, Jeff M and Kristian J for coming out repeatedly.

Thanks to The Hamilton Spectator, CHCH and CBC Hamilton for the coverage.  Thanks to those who spread the word through social media.  Every share, every word of mouth made a difference.  

Thanks to the Hamilton Community Food Centre for their support and guidance.  

And lastly thanks to everyone who requested a tree / shrub.  Thank you for planting and caring for your tree / shrub and participating in increasing our tree canopy.


This really was a group effort to get so many trees and shrubs distributed throughout the City.

NOTE: The Urban Forest Strategy final version will be presented to City Council in October 2021.

Important Links from our webinar on February 4th, 2021.

Link to slideshow presentation.

Link to a recording of our webinar.

Link to our Action Sheet.

Link to "The Benefits of Trees" image.

Link to a short video that is an updated version of our "The Benefits of Trees" image.

i-Tree calculations for three different sized White Oaks in the Parkview Neighbourhood.  This image will give you an idea of how much Carbon each tree can sequester, how much air pollution it removes, etc.

Scroll to the bottom to find our reports from previous Trees Please tree inventorying and air quality data collection.


For years, the Hamilton Naturalists' Club has been urging the City to create an Urban Forest Strategy (UFS).  This kind of strategy would help increase and protect our urban forest.  The City started this process in 2018 / 2019 and we are excited that they have released a draft and recently announced an online public engagement session on February 9th.

We want to see a strong, bold strategy that would mean more trees across our City, not just in spots that are easy to plant them.

List of useful resources:

1) Draft of the Urban Forest Strategy (a shorter version)

2) Longer Technical version

3) And page on Engage Hamilton with polls and survey.

 

 


Despite the pandemic, Trees Please was able to accomplish our goals for 2020. 
We are so grateful for our volunteers, supporters, funders, partners.

Here are some of the things we did in 2020!


VIDEOS:

With thanks to the Hamilton Community Foundation we created three videos of common tree issues we have come across while collecting tree data.

Here are the links to our videos.  We hope you enjoy them!

Video about Hackberry Galls

Video about Emerald Ash Borer

Video about Tar Spots found on Maple Trees

 


Thank you to everyone who participated in our Free Tree Giveaway.  There are now 600+ native trees and shrubs in our City.

We would like to thank Arbor Day Foundation and TD Bank for their support!

In March 2020, this project was one of 20 funded across North America through the Arbor Day Foundation / TD Bank Green Space Grant.

With their support, Hamilton will have 1000 more native trees.


 

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In October 2019, in partnership with the City of Hamilton's Forestry division, we planted 250 native trees at Windermere Basin. 

A big thanks to our volunteers who helped us and to Forestry staff - we can't do it without you!

L-R: Carolyn (Hamilton Naturalist's Club) and Forestry division staff: Craig, John, Dean, Dennis

CHCH covered our tree planting.  Here is a link to their broadcast.  Thanks CHCH!

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Trees Please over the course of 2016 - 2018 were in the following neighbourhoods:

2016: Beach Strip and Beasley 

2017: Crown Point and McQuesten

2018: North End and Sherman Hub

2019: Parkview 

We generated a number of reports using the data that was collected.  Here is a link to the trees we have inventoried.

Beach Strip Report (2016)

Beasley Report (2016)

Crown Point Report (2017)

McQuesten Report (2017)

North End Report (2018)

Sherman Hub (2018)

Parkview Report (2019)

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  • Lynda Lukasik
    published this page in Projects 2021-03-17 19:43:24 -0400