Clean Green Beautiful North Bay was out yesterday to help two schools add to their tree collection. They visited Silver Birches Elementary on Marshall Avenue yesterday morning and from there went to École secondaire publique Odyssée, at 480 Norman Avenue.
Harriett Madigan founded Clean Green Beautiful North Bay. She explained how the group has planted quite a few trees at schools throughout North Bay, including locations at Canadore College and Nipissing University.
As the new trees were planted at Silver Birches, not 20 feet away were some older trees – now about six feet tall – the group had planted a few years earlier.
“We want to bring beauty to the community,” Madigan said, because beauty “gets people talking and conversing and creates more support for the community.”
See: Clean, Green, Beautiful North Bay launches another Neighbourhood Clean-Up Challenge
Over the past four years, the group has planted five orchards in town. With today’s planting, that number rises to seven. Today’s selection for Silver Birches were apple and pear trees. They planted six trees at both Silver Birches and Odyssée.
Planting trees is a lot of work. Thankfully, the group had help from the Silver Birches kindergarten crew to make short work of it.
Urban forestry is very important to the group, “and there’s a movement to green school yards,” Madigan noted. The group received support from Trees 4 Nipissing, Eagle Tree Service, and Canadore College to make today’s planting a success.
“We are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with Clean, Green, Beautiful, and Trees for
Nipissing to provide orchards to both Odyssée. and Silver Birches,” said Jesse Russell, Project Leader with Canadore Sustainable. “We look forward to watching them grow, and bear fruit for years to come.”
The goal is to plant fruit trees in two schools each year. Ideally in May and June – prime tree planting times, according to Madigan.
Heather Debrowski teaches at Silver Birches, and she “wanted to get as many students as I could involved with this tree planting.” The event provided a nice way to teach the kids more about trees and how to take care of them.
For Madigan, working with the schools is especially rewarding. “To see the joy on the kids’ faces is truly amazing. And it’s a ripple effect, they’ll go home excited and tell their parents about how important it is to plant trees.”
And so, the trees become a forest.
David Briggs is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of BayToday, a publication of Village Media. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.
