Tree planting is one of those quintessentially Canadian jobs that evokes visions of bug-ridden summers in lonely mountain valleys battling dehydration and madness.
But here it is in mid-October, on a day for woolly socks and pumpkin spice, and Eric Davies takes an occasional sip of craft beer as he and two volunteers sow around 1,500 acorns in the front yard of his Toronto apartment. It’s an activity so foreign in this leafy pocket of Little Italy that locals stop and stare. Some ask questions. Some continue walking in utter befuddlement.
In a four-metre-by-four-metre raised enclosure of soil and seeds, Mr. Davies, an ecologist, hopes to grow more than just a few hundred oak seedlings. His broader aim is to cultivate a social movement that will restore native tree species to their proper place atop the city’s botanical pecking order.
“The value of local trees goes far beyond their beauty,” he says. “They are more resilient to climate change and very good for biodiversity. With a variable climate and insect outbreaks, we really need to be planting the strongest trees possible.”
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