Tag: Edmonton
Cultivate McCauley – 6 Ways to Grow 1,000 Community Trees
A Neighbourhood Revitalization Project With the help of residents, businesses, and social agencies, Shrubscriber, with support from a City of Edmonton Revitalization Grant, is working on a project called Cultivate McCauley to grow, distribute, and plant 1,000 trees. This effort will increase the neighbourhood’s tree canopy by 2%, moving it closer to Edmonton’s goal of…
Edmonton Tree Canopy By Neighbourhood
A Twenty Percent Tree Canopy Goal The City of Edmonton’s goal is to have a tree canopy covering 20% of the city. A 20% canopy would hide one-fifth of the city under a tree. Currently, the Edmonton tree canopy is sitting around 13%. Scroll down to see how your neighbourhood stacks up against the City’s…
Cultivate the Millennium!
Growing and Tending Thousand-Year-Old Trees Long Now Foundation, Ignite 2024 In May 2024, I had the fortune of presenting at the Long Now Foundation’s 2024 Ignite Talks in San Francisco about our efforts to grow 1000 thousand-year-old trees throughout Edmonton. You can find all of the Long Now Foundation Ignite Talks on YouTube 2024 Ignite…
Community Supported Forestry (CSF)
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…
How To Grow a 1000-Year-Old Tree
Edmonton Public Library How-To Festival What would it be like to live in a world where people tended 1000-year-old trees? How might planting long-lived trees change our thinking about the future and our role in its creation? The following is a recording and edited transcript of a talk I gave at the Edmonton Public Library’s…
Alberta Tree Register
Cataloguing Alberta’s Heritage Trees In 2019, with support from the Edmonton Heritage Council, I embarked on a year-long project to catalogue Edmonton’s heritage trees and plants. While doing so, I came across Lethbridge arborist Maureen Sexsmith-West, and the two of us teamed up to start the Alberta Tree Register. The Alberta Tree Register attempts to pick…
Edmonton Youth Beekeeping Club
The Northlands/Prince’s Charities Edmonton Youth Bee Club From Spring until Fall, students from across the Edmonton gathed at Northlands to learn about honeybees. Sponsored by the Prince’s Charities (Now Kings Trust), twenty students, acged 13 to 18, managed ten beehives on site. Each week, weather permitting, we covered important beekeeping topics and performed routine hive inspections.…
Researching Edmonton Heritage Trees
Supported by the Edmonton Heritage Council On the edge of downtown Edmonton, on the river valley slopes, grows a wild patch of goji berries, descended from seeds imported and tended by Edmonton’s early Chinese community. A few blocks West, surrounded by asphalt, the chestnut seed Walter Holowach collected in Vienna stands forty feet tall, casting…
What Makes A Heritage Tree? Part 1 -Time
Time, Novelty, and Narrative and the Value of Heritage Trees The 2008 book Heritage Tree of Alberta lists 28 trees in Edmonton that are said to have “heritage value,” but what does that mean? How can we define “heritage tree”? This article attempts to synthesize a definition of a heritage tree by comparing the twenty-eight…
Is McCauley Edmonton’s Gardening Community?
Green In The Inner-City In the Fall of 2014, I found myself looking at a house off Church Street in the inner-city neighbourhood of Edmonton McCauley. I was familiar with the community due to frequent visits to the Italian Centre Shop and Coffee Shop Cafe, Zocalo. I was also familiar with the area’s reputation for…
When to Plant Your Edmonton Garden
Stop Waiting Until May Frost Day to Plant Your Garden Are you wondering when to plant your garden? Historically, you would plant your Edmonton Garden the third weekend in May, but is that the best time to plant? I’d argue that you can plant your garden much earlier. Waiting Until After the Last Frost Date…
Decorative Tree Lighting Can Kill Trees
The Dark Side of Decorative Tree Lighting Edmonton has embraced year-round decorative tree lighting, and it’s hard not to love it! A 2015 Edmonton Journal article states that the City’s forestry department “installed lights on 1000 city-owned trees in six business revitalization zones.” Walking Whyte, Churchill, or Giovanni Caboto amongst twinkling giant elms is magical.…