Magda Konieczna

Seeing the city through the trees

appeared in The Mercury Aug. 4, 2007

It's a hot summer morning in St. George's Park, just outside the city's downtown. All around, regular summer-morning things are going on: a woman reads a novel on a park bench, kids swing and slide, dog-walkers slow as their pets stop to greet one another.

None of them pay much attention to Randy Drewery, who is busy poking a tree. He's tapping it with a bright orange stick. He's prodding it. He's looking at it and listening.

The city's arborist knows more about trees than seems possible. He rattles off spots in the park where dying trees were removed in years past. He recalls the 180-something-year-old tree that used to stand on the corner. He considers the stature of one of the park's newer trees, and wonders if it would hit the woman on the bench if it fell.

"We talk about trees like people," he says. "We make relationships with trees. For me, it's like being a doctor with a patient -- a tree can't talk, but it can show signs."

It can say " 'I need a trim,' or 'I've almost had it.' "

"When I'm talking about trees, I try to talk in human terms," he says.

He describes a burl -- one of those large, woody growths on a tree trunk -- as being like a wart. He describes injuries from weed whackers as scabs that can't heal because they're irritated each time the grass is cut. He describes hollow bits -- parts that have rotted away, and likely helped along by squirrels -- as cavities he could choose to fill with concrete, as a dentist might.

He looks at a gash in the bark.

"That likely had a small rip," he figures. "I wasn't here -- it probably happened generations ago."

That's part of the beauty of the whole exercise: it's a complex process of looking at the cityscape and imagining what it might look like 20, 30 or 40 years from now.

"You can go and replace a sewer and it's fully functional, whereas a tree, it takes 20 years for it to mature," says Derek McCaughan, the city's director of operations.

That's why understanding the city's tree stock and planning for its future is so important, and so difficult.

Monday marks the first ever John Galt Day -- a celebration of the man who founded this city in 1827 by chopping down a maple tree. Back then, about 90 per cent of this area was tree-covered. Early settlers considered trees something that slowed growth. These days, Guelph's tree coverage is below 30 per cent, and so it's apt the day is being celebrated with the planting of a maple.

It's symbolic of the changing view and role of trees in the city.

Advocates of the urban forest rattle off a long list of benefits, from making the city more livable and cooling it down -- St. George's Park is four or five degrees cooler than the south end, arborist Drewery says -- to providing habitats for animals, absorbing rainwater, acting as sound and dust barriers and pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

Forests have been managed in natural areas for a long time, but managing the forest of trees within city parks and lining city streets is a relatively new idea, and one that's growing in importance.

"With global climate change and with now 50 per cent of the world population living in cities as of this year, people are becoming more and more interested in using trees to make urban environments more thermally comfortable," Robert Brown, a University of Guelph landscape architecture professor, said in an e-mail interview.

And Guelph's tree policy is at a crossroads right now, with McCaughan hoping the city will adopt tighter protections and a more robust policy of planting and taking care of trees to ensure a larger and healthier urban forest.

As it stands, the city's forestry department doesn't have the money or staff to do much more than react to calls from residents as branches break or trees fall.

"We're not managing trees -- we're just reacting to requests to trim them," McCaughan said. "We're not as proactive as we need to be."

If a tree desperately needs to be removed, it could take two to three weeks. But if the situation isn't dire, it could take two years, Drewery said.

Part of the change McCaughan is hoping for involves making a list of all the city's trees.

Staff started making a paper list about 10 years ago of new trees as they were put in the ground. Now, they're working to make that list electronic so they can figure out just how much tree canopy there is in Guelph, which areas need more trees, and track species in case of disease, McCaughan said.

McCaughan envisions a truly 21st-century approach, equipping staff with hand-held GPS systems that would let them enter each of the city's trees into a giant database tracking their age, condition and when maintenance needs to be done. The system would let staff know every day which of the city trees need their attention.

But making a list of all the 100,000 or so trees in Guelph wouldn't be easy. At 10 minutes per tree, it would take one person more than five years on the job to do the inventory. It's likely something that would require more staff and more resources to get set up. But maintaining the list once it's made would be much simpler, McCaughan said. He hopes to bring a report to city hall in the fall describing just what it would take to bump up the effort the city puts into its urban forest, including making the inventory.

Of course, Guelph isn't the first place to be considering such a daunting task. The City of Regina has a list of all its trees. Second-year students made an inventory of trees at the University of Waterloo in 1998, and in 1999, Alberta made an inventory of all its elm trees in an effort to get a handle on Dutch Elm Disease.

Toronto has a list of just a small fraction of its trees. But as part of its climate change plan, that city committed to doubling its canopy by 2020. That's a bold plan -- it means adding about 12 million trees.

A HARSH ENVIRONMENT

City trees sprout from a landscape of pavement and concrete. They have to struggle with exhaust, and their roots have to compete with pipes, gas lines and everything else that lurks underground. They have to deal with the regular bustle of the city -- people bumping into them, carving their names, urinating on them or even snapping them at the trunk.

It's a marked contrast with the serene environment where trees naturally flourish. But despite the struggle that defines their survival, the value of city trees is increasingly being recognized, McCaughan said.

"There was a time when landscaping was an afterthought, put in because we had to, not because we wanted to," he said. These days, it's considered an integral part of the cityscape, he said, pointing to the redevelopment of Gordon Street just south of the downtown.

"That's a good example of landscaping being included (in planning)," he said.

The biggest problem for young trees is that there aren't enough staff members to water them regularly, McCaughan said. When they plant trees in front of people's homes, staff members leave information packages reminding homeowners to water the trees. But trees in parks often have to fend for themselves. The survival rate for trees planted by city staff is about 80 per cent -- relatively high, but not high enough, since each tree that doesn't make it has to be replanted.

"That's rework," McCaughan said. "We're behind the 8-ball already, without having to rework."

Part of the problem is that trees often don't show signs of struggle for some time.

Someone cutting grass might, for instance, hit a tree with a weed whacker every week without realizing the harm it does.

"No one's told them it hurts the tree, and the damage isn't instantaneous," McCaughan said. "But the tree may have a life cycle of 45 years but dies at 30 -- it's like death by 1,000 cuts."

BRANCHING OUT

Along with keeping better track of the state of the city's trees, McCaughan said the city needs to step up planting. Currently, the city puts in about 1,200 to 1,500 trees every year. Much of that is driven by developers, he said, who are instructed to put a tree on each new property, and two on corner properties, unless the homeowner objects.

"Unfortunately, we have to take down almost an equal amount," McCaughan said. "They're trees that are dead, dying, pose risks or sustain storm damage."

The city needs a better strategy of planning for the future, he said. It's not enough to plant as trees die. Instead, staff try to put in trees as others age, so they get a chance to mature before the older trees are removed. But without a good policy and recordkeeping, it can be hard to keep up.

McCaughan said the problem came to a head in 2005, when city staff set out to cut down 16 old silver maples in Royal City Park, along Water Street near Gordon. Angry residents temporarily stopped the work, arguing the city should remove the trees over years to avoid leaving the park bare. But city staff at the time said that wasn't possible, because the trees were dangerous and had been left too long.

And unfortunately, new trees hadn't been planted to replace the old ones.

"We ended up with gaping holes as we took them down," McCaughan said. "We're planting trees now, but it will take 20 years for them to have substance. If you don't start planting, you're going to end up with a barren park."

On top of maintaining the beauty of parks and streets, the goal is to increase the city's tree canopy -- the amount of land in the city that's shaded at high noon in the summer. Right now, about 27 per cent of the city is covered by tree canopy. Ideally, that would be closer to 40 per cent, McCaughan said.

Trees For Guelph has been working away at that since 1990. The volunteer group has planted about 80,000 trees since then, at a current rate of about 5,000 trees a year. They started out planting in industrial lands -- which currently have less than 15 per cent canopy cover.

"The group looked for ways to get trees where trees otherwise weren't going to get," said Martin Neumann, one of the group's founding members.

These days they're spending about $15,000 to $20,000 a year on nursery stock and to pay people to co-ordinate planting -- cash that comes from the city, the conservation authority, McNeil Consumer Healthcare, and grants from places like the Trillium Foundation and the Rotary Club. Much of the planting is done by school children -- part of the group's outreach strategy.

But cash is the limiting factor, and while he's proud of what they've planted, he said achieving a 40 per cent canopy cover would take much more money, and doubling or even tripling the effort. That's not something the group can take on itself, Neumann said, but he hopes the city's new forestry strategy will help.

COMMUNITY GROUPS WEIGH IN

The sheer number of local groups promoting varying aspects of the urban forest points to the various functions it serves in the city.

The Jesuit community is working to start an old-growth, native forest on part of its property at the edge of the city, east of Highway 6 near Woodlawn Road. The plan is to create a sanctuary for people, animals and plants, said Jim Profit, director of the Ignatius Jesuit Centre.

"It's to do something concrete for the future in the midst of the ecological problem that is happening," he said. The Jesuits will plant native species, and work to keep out non-native ones, because that's what birds, animals and butterflies have evolved to feed on. They also want to preserve the native gene pool.

"These trees don't grow elsewhere, and if we don't protect them here, they won't be protected anywhere," he said.

The residents of Kortright Hills recently went to battle over a particularly stately tree. The 500-year-old ironwood, considered to be the oldest tree in Wellington County, stands west of the Hanlon Expressway near Laird Road, in the area slated to become the Hanlon Creek Business Park. Emotions ran high a couple of years ago when it became apparent that tree could be removed to make room for the park.

The local community association appealed the development to Ontario Municipal Board, and the settlement includes protections for that particular tree.

And a local group called the Appleseed Collective sees the urban forest as nourishing. The year-old group harvests fruit trees in city parks and in people's yards, and donates the fruit to local food banks.

"There's been a lot of emphasis recently on eating local, and there are a lot of fruit trees no one knows about that aren't sprayed and produce beautiful fruit that just drops," said Olivia Brown, who's involved in the fruit tree project.

She envisions fruit trees as an integral part of the city's tree stock, but said there needs first to be a culture of picking and appreciating local fruit.

FOR THE NEXT GENERATION

Back at the park, Drewery is looking around and imagining how things might look in ten years.

"This park is getting to the age where old trees here are starting to age and at some point, you have to replace them," he says.

"Our challenge is to have younger trees replace them. You plant not just for this year, but for the next generation."