Trinity Bellwoods Park ADOPT-A-TREE (AAT) Program

Join the Friends of Trinity Bellwoods Park (FoTBP) volunteer Adopt-A-Tree program and help keep the park's newly planted trees alive through their precarious first few years when their root systems are still shallow.

It's easy – sign up for a specific young tree and from spring to fall make sure it gets five gallons of water each week when there's been no or insufficient rainfall. It's a terrific thing to do with kids or while walking the dog.

Interested? Contact Michaelle, the AAT Coordinator using the FoTBP contact form.

Alternatively, come out during the spring or fall "park days" and sign up.

BACKGROUND

The Trinity Bellwoods Park's canopy of shady trees is a big part of its appeal and majesty. The FoTBP's Adopt-A-Tree program was established in 2006 by Friend of the park Jenna Hofbauer when she and other park neighbors realised city staff was often stretched too thin to maintain suffient watering in the young trees' first years.  It takes three to five years for the saplings to develop deep enough root systems to survive a lack of rainfall.  Since so many of us are in the park regularly it was an easy decision to "adopt" a tree and water it regularly in order to help ensure the survival of succession trees and the continued renewal of the magnificent tree canopy.

 What's Involved:

• Five gallons of water a week from May to October,
• weeding around the tree's base to avoid competition for the water,
• and a spring and/or fall mulching which helps slow water evaporation, prevents the mowers from damaging the bark and keeps the weeds down.
  
  

The city's Parks Department has opened several taps around the park for the AAT program where we keep water containers and bundle buggys.  On the east side of the park there is an open tap on the ice house just south of the ice-rink.  During the summer from July to the end of August there is also a water outlet and water containers on the west side of the park in the grounds of the vibrant Art in The Park program. There's also recently been a water source opened in the bowl -- much appreciated by the dogs too, and one on the north end of the park at Dundas and Montrose.

The Friends of Trinity Bellwoods Park organise, in cooperation with City Parks, a mulching day in the spring or fall.

 A map of the trees currently in the Tri-Bell AAT program can be found below:

View Trinity Bellwoods Park - Adopt A Tree Program Map in a larger map

Did you know 2011 is the United Nations' International Year of Forests...?