TWO BILLION TREES
Endless Rows Do Not A Forest Make

by Peter W. Gribble

The following is an updated, revised version of the January 2021’s column on Canada’s plan to plant two billion trees.

In December 2020, then Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan announced the funding of $3.16 billion to plant two billion trees over ten years with the aim to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Planting trees in vast numbers is nothing new. One of the earliest was Sumeria’s Sargon the Great (2334-2279 BCE), history's first empire builder, who proudly claimed he began as a gardener.

The Greek General Xenophon (430-355/354 B.C.E.) wrote about Cyrus of Persia’s love of gardening, deriving great pleasure in proudly showing trees he had grown from seed, nurtured, and transplanted out with his own hands at his palace garden in Sardis (now Cappadocia, Turkey.)

Yet what can we do in our little empire of one tiny balcony or single garden plot?

Sometimes the balcony decides. It’s a wee miracle when something green sprouts all by itself from a crack or a corner on a high windswept balcony. Moss in the Pacific Northwest is a given, which we mostly ignore but moss provides a toehold for ferns, a blade of grass, and more. When a tree germinates in our part of the concrete jungle, we feel something akin to parenthood.

Walking through West End, you’ll see small cedar, fir, and certainly alder saplings emerging out of tight or neglected spaces. In my backyard I’ve had hawthorn, Katsura, holly, laurel, salal, and maples grow out of the joins in wooden deck chairs and cracks in concrete or asphalt. In the past when they showed up I rescued them and potted them up. As agents of the dispersal, squirrels are keen to sow their own harvest from sumac trees, the occasional oak or cherry tree, and the rarer hazelnut tree. One hard-working squirrel was burying peanuts in the shell and pieces of popcorn hoping they would germinate. Gardeners are such optimists.

With the number of baby trees I was rescuing I ran out of room fast. To accommodate the orphanage, some of the progeny were turned into bonsai. With a little consistent care, bonsai are ideal trees for the small space. One caveat; the shallow pots they’re in dry out fast. During hot weather, you will need to water them at least once a day. Without a good drink of water in the morning, a single day trapped in a sunny exposure can kill them.

Larger trees on balconies are possible but, like bonsai, require a pruning both of roots and branches at specific times of the year to acclimate them to the reduced quarters. I’ve seen eight-foot-tall fruit-producing apple, Italian prune plum, and persimmon trees (one of each in its own large pot) all on a single 17th-floor balcony.

WITH CARE, TREES CAN THRIVE ON YOUR BALCONY.

My own large-scale tree planting experience was as a boy scout in the Ottawa area. Open fields were all around us. We planted hundreds of trees that late fall Saturday – we were dressed for cold weather. The three-man team consisted of the digger (the adult), tree dispenser (me), and my same-aged buddy who tamped down the tree and firmed the soil around it. We broke for lunch then carried on. We quit mid-afternoon when it turned too cold to work.

Years later my parents drove me past it and the entire area was unrecognizable. We stopped and got out. Other teams had come after us and had planted their regiment of trees. Mine was one of the oldest, a tall tight phalanx of identical trees standing at attention in rigid rows. All around us were similar large block formations growing at different heights. Nothing grew beneath them. It was silent, eerie and the most unnatural forest I have ever experienced. Such was their color, height, and uniformity, I suspected they were clones of the same tree but, too late, I wondered who we had done this for. Ottawa had its Experimental Farm but no one told us that day whether it was for them. If I were to do it again, I would demand to know that, and why it was done the way it was.

The inadequacy of my tree planting experience came back when I first saw the 1989 Oscar-winning animated short, The Man Who Planted Trees, which I’ve written about before. Based on the short fiction story by French writer, Jean Giono, it describes how one man planted thousands of trees with reverent care over fifty years to bring a desolate land back to life. Oscar fame sent the short around the world inspiring many volunteer tree planting projects as far-flung as Africa and India. This was the way to plant trees.

Two billion trees planted over ten years is laudable but let’s do it right and not just to achieve net-zero gas emissions. A healthy, thriving forest will go much further by improving soil structure, restoring plant, and insect and wildlife diversity and populations – to say nothing of how lovely it’ll be for us to walk beneath its shade and breathe its healing air in the future.

The Government of Canada 2 Billion Trees (2BT) website is here. The care, which has gone into the site is encouraging. Yet for all the money and timeline details one wonders how this is being implemented. Where is the seed coming from? What is its quality? How are planting sites determined? Exploring the website one can find, eventually, reassuring statements and principles. “Tree planting moves at the speed of Nature” and “Two billion trees start with two billion seeds” are two of them.

ENDLESS ROWS OF IDENTICAL TREES DO NOT A FOREST MAKE.

On December 16, 2021, David Thurton of CBC News reported on two recent recipients of 2BT funding: “According to the government, the first round saw Ottawa sign agreements with at least 59 organizations worth more than $21 million.”

“The McLeod Lake First Nation near Prince George, B.C. received $2,150,000 for its project — called Gat' Azi-gat' Cho, or ‘Little Trees - Big Trees.’ The band planted millions of trees after its forests were devastated by a spruce bark beetle infestation.

“‘We planted 4.3 million spruce and pine seedlings using our own crews,’ said Chief Harley Chingee. ‘It was a very worthwhile project.’

Ramo, a Quebec-based organization that uses trees to solve environmental problems, received $3,353,700 during the first round of funding. It planted 1.1 million willow saplings and is working to increase its capacity to the point where it can plant 30 million trees per year.

“‘We plant willow because it can grow up to ten times faster than a traditional forest,’ said Francis Allard, Ramo's co-founder and CEO. ‘When we talk about climate change, it's about finding solutions that will sequester carbon on a short-term basis.’"

Planting cuttings from willow – one of the easiest trees to root from a cutting – creates a monoculture: identical genetic material replicated, not germinated. No seed and not the speed of Nature, but another human quick-fix.

This ups the concern that the 59 organizations receiving this early round of $21 million have 59 different methodologies.

If the aim is merely to solve the gas emission problem via carbon sequestering, simple tree planting may not provide so quick a solution. A study from the University of Stirling in Scotland, published in June 2020 found a 39-year-old planting of birches on heather moorlands in four different sections had not increased the ecosystem carbon stocks during that period. One of the authors summed up the findings: “The climate emergency affects us all – and it is important that strategies implemented to mitigate climate change – such as large-scale tree planting – are robust and achieve the intended outcomes. Changes to carbon storage – both above and below ground – must be better quantified and understood before we can be assured that large-scale tree planting will have the intended policy and climate outcomes."

An example, closer to home, of how tree planting practices can have unintended devastating effects was revealed in a study conducted by McMaster University. They demonstrated how government efforts to enhance black spruce tree cover by draining a peat bog aggravated the explosive Fort McMurray/Horse River 2016 fire.

By contrast, Akira Miyawaki, one of the foremost plant ecologists, developed his “Miyawaki Method” over decades of careful study and research. The method restores native forests with seeds from native plants and determines key role species, matches them with complementary species, and supports them with companion plantings, thus building a balanced forest community. His practices have achieved great success around the world from the tropics to temperate regions. Basically, it is the restoration of what was previously there.

It’s not just about trees, it's about forests.

So let us insist our two billion trees do not come from clonal replication, or cuttings or slips grafted onto a stronger rootstock to force rapid growth, or trees grown for commercial harvest. Let us insist all our two billion trees are started from seed, grown and planted out where they thrived before to contribute and restore a balanced forest dynamic. Let this be planned, organized, and maintained by knowledgeable, experienced silvologists (forest ecology scientists), environmentalists, First Nation stewards, arborists and lovers of trees and forests.

Tree planting volunteers are being called for. Years from now they will be proud – like Cyrus of Persia two thousand four hundred years ago – to point out to their children and grandchildren, “This beautiful forest we’re walking through? I helped plant it.”

In the meantime, while our young forests grow, we can nurture the little trees blown to our windswept balconies by Nature herself ... for free.

As a little bonus, you can find on the 2 Billion Trees website a free app called My Tree to determine which trees will grow best in your area.