Growing Climate-Resilient Neighbourhoods One Tree at a Time

If you’ve ever signed up for a vegetable CSA, you already understand the idea behind Community Supported Forestry. You invest in something local, share in the harvest, and become part of something bigger than a transaction. Now imagine doing that with trees.

From Vegetables to Forests

Community Supported Forestry works on the same principle, but trees change the equation in one important way: they’re not consumables. A honeylocust can live for 150 years while producing edible pods, cooling the street below, building soil, cleaning the air, and supporting pollinators. Plant one today, and your great-grandchildren will still be sitting in its shade. And at the end of its life? You get furniture.

That’s not a crop. That’s an intergenerational gift.

So here’s my working definition: Community Supported Forestry is the collective propagation, distribution, planting, and tending of a biodiverse, climate-adapted tree canopy by and for the community.

Why Trees, and Why Now?

Trees are among the most powerful climate adaptation tools we have. A well-placed tree can reduce a home’s heating and cooling costs by up to 25%. At the neighbourhood scale, tree canopy reduces the urban heat island effect, manages stormwater, improves air quality, and, consistently, across study after study, reduces crime and improves mental health outcomes.

But not everyone has equal access to trees. Tree canopies are unevenly distributed – often concentrated in wealthier neighbourhoods and sparse in communities that face the greatest climate risks. The people who need trees most are often the last to get them.

A CSF model can change that. Instead of depending on municipal budgets and commercial nurseries, a community forestry network distributes both the labour and the benefit. Trees grow in backyards and on balconies across the city, and are directed to the neighbourhoods where they’ll do the most good. The community grows the forest. The forest grows the community.

“Community Supported Forestry is the collective propagation, distribution, planting, and tending of a biodiverse, climate-adapted tree canopy by and for the community.”

What Does Membership Actually Look Like?

This is where CSFs differ most from traditional CSAs, and where I get the most questions.

Not everyone has a yard. Not everyone can plant a tree. So what does a tree share mean for someone in an apartment?

It means supporting a network of local tree growers. It means contributing to a community that’s mapping urban heat islands, identifying undergreened neighbourhoods, and getting trees into the ground alongside the people who live there. Your share funds seeds, soil, workshops, and distribution – and the trees find homes in communities that need them.

Members who do have space can grow alongside the network, propagating trees from seeds and cuttings, tending their own backyard nursery, and contributing trees back into the community supply. Skills get shared. Seeds get passed around. The network gets stronger with every person who joins it.

That’s not a subscription. That’s rugged togetherness.

Shrubscriber: Edmonton’s Tree CSA

I started Shrubscriber in 2021 with a backyard full of apricot seedlings and a simple question: how do I get these trees into the hands of people who’ll actually plant them?

In 2015, I’d collected 100 apricot pits from three trees growing on an Edmonton boulevard. I planted them in four square feet of my backyard. The following spring, 96 sprouted. I’ve been growing trees — and trying to figure out what to do with all of them — ever since.

Shrubscriber became my answer. It’s Edmonton’s community-supported forestry network connecting tree-curious people with the skills, seeds, and community to grow climate-resilient neighbourhoods. Members receive tree shares throughout the year, access to a plant database of 490+ species, monthly propagation gatherings, and a community of growers who show up for each other and for the city.

The work is tangible. Through our Cultivate McCauley project, supported by a City of Edmonton Revitalization Grant, we’ve propagated over 1,000 trees across more than 20 species and established community nurseries in one of Edmonton’s most climate-vulnerable neighbourhoods. Residents have received apricot trees, mulberries, honeylocusts, and willows — trees that feed pollinators, cool streets, and in many cases connect directly to cultural heritage.

Resilience Is Connection

A single community-supported forestry network, in a single city, is a start. But the model scales. A network of members, each growing hundreds of trees in backyards, on balconies, in community gardens, could collectively propagate and distribute tens of thousands of diverse, locally adapted trees every year.

I’ve written before that self-sufficiency is a myth – that resilience isn’t something you build alone, it’s something you cultivate together. Community Supported Forestry is a shared sufficiency applied to trees, people, nature, and cities. Trees planted today will outlive all of us. The question is whether we’ll plant them — and whether we’ll plant them where they’re needed most.

Shrubscriber is Edmonton’s Tree CSA — a community-supported forestry network growing biodiverse, climate-resilient neighbourhoods. Learn more and join at Shrubscriber.com.