trees on offer from Vancouver park board

10 trees on offer from Vancouver park board

VANCOUVER Looking for a cheap tree to spruce up your yard?

If so, the Vancouver park board is selling a variety of young trees on Saturday for $10 each to help residents grow the city’s urban forest, which has declined during the past two decades.

“We’ve been looking at our citywide urban tree canopy and we’ve estimated that most of the capacity for growing new canopy is on private property,” said Katherine Isaac, the board’s urban forestry strategy project manager. “We’ve been finding out that our canopy citywide has been declining steadily over the last two decades, primarily on private property.”

Isaac said there are many reasons for the decline, including redevelopment.

“There’s many competing priorities on private properties. People want sunlight, views, the opportunity to grow urban agriculture, and of course, built forms (redevelopment).”

The tree sale is part of the city’s second annual Doors Open Vancouver, in which residents can tour 18 locations including the Stanley Park miniature train yard, the Roundhouse community centre, the Orpheum and the Vancouver Public Library’s central library.

“The park board has a long history of planting and caring for trees in green spaces and parks across Vancouver, but we need residents to also plant trees on their property in order to increase the urban tree canopy,” said park board chairman John Coupar.

The 1.8 metre trees will be available to Vancouver residents with proof of residency.

The trees include fruit (Italian prune plums, apple and cherry), flowering (Snowcone Japanese Snowbell and Magnolia ‘Randy’), shade (Katsura and Autumn Gold Ginkgo) and conifers (dwarf mountain pine ‘mops’ and Frohburg Weeping Norway spruce) valued at up to $100 each. There’s a limit of five trees per person.

The park board hopes to plant 11,000 new trees this year in support of the city’s Urban Forest Strategy, which was endorsed by the park board and city council last year.

Vancouver now has more than 140,000 street trees and 340,000 park trees along with those on private property. The urban forest plays important environmental and social roles, such as cleaning http://www.cheapjerseys11.com/ the air, absorbing storm water, storing carbon, providing bird habitat and improving health and well being, the board said in a release.

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