Urban Forests where Community is Key

Forêt Capitale Forest (FCF) is a non-profit organisation that aims to strengthen resilience to climate change by increasing biomass, biodiversity, and carbon sequestration on lands in Canada’s Capital Region. Our objective is to foster community empowerment through educational and applied research experience to have expanded, thriving forests, stewarded by the communities they are growing in.

Our website features the phrase “planting trees with a plan,” referring to our Afforestation Plan that is a distinguishing element of our organisation. By modelling four stages of afforestation—Launch and Learn, Surviving and Thriving, Free to Grow, and Assess and Adjust—the Afforestation Plan ensures successful tree health, monitoring, and maintenance considerations at a long-term scale. Our process also uses a defined set of performance indicators to manage multiple tree establishment sites simultaneously and to confirm site readiness before moving to the next stage, and we retrospectively review each year’s activities and keep an updated record for each site for assessment.

FCF also engages with local groups and community associations to collaboratively ensure that newly planted sites, and the young trees within them, make it to the “Free to Grow” stage. FCF’s volunteers and staff visit sites regularly at this stage to perform maintenance tasks like watering, weeding and mulching, and monitoring for any disease or pests. As the number of sites that we plant and maintain grows, the need for teams of local volunteers to join our work grows greater as well (you can find our volunteer form at our website). 

Through our collaboration with the National Capital Commission (NCC) and their excellent forestry team, trees on the NCC sites have been a wonderful selection of native species sourced from local nurseries and planted with care by enthusiastic volunteers. And because we carefully select trees that are found natively in this region, our sites are established with resilient trees that are more likely to survive and thrive.

Still, we are now taking the planting of native species to another level by applying the Miyawaki method of afforestation to Tiny urban forests in several of our planting sites, and we have even established several Tiny forest demonstration plots at our base of operations at the Just Food Community Farm. If you are not familiar with this method, it promises accelerated growth by prescribing soil amendments to mimic the conditions of an established forest floor, selecting native species of trees and understory plants, and increasing planting density. Furthermore, the developing science and understanding about the role of the “soil food web” to forest health and resilience has also made us more keen to learn and share on this topic; for that reason, we have engaged in a citizen science project with the University of Guelph’s Centre for Biodiversity Genomics on these demonstration plots to measure soil and surface biodiversity over time as another way to compare our approaches to increasing urban tree canopy. 

Designing spaces with food-bearing trees and shrubs is not a new approach to feeding communities and it is important to recognize the many wonderful examples of purposefully-planted indigenous forest gardens. Creating food security for a community by intentionally selecting and propagating edible trees, shrubs and perennials right in your own neighbourhood makes good sense. Food-bearing trees and shrubs can adapt to many fringe urban spaces and demonstrate alternative methods to grow food with a no-till approach that can be managed without a lot of inputs required [to learn more please visit ottawafoodforests.com].

Personally, I have established many food forests in the city on personal property, corporate sites, and in public spaces like the community food forest established in partnership with Just Food, and I consider the reimagining of urban spaces as a place where we also think about how we feed our city—while also increasing urban canopy—as another topic near and dear to my heart. Food forests are a land management system that mimics a natural woodland ecosystem by incorporating edible trees, shrubs, perennials, mushrooms and annuals. For these plantings we select both native edible species and naturalised species, because there are so many desirable naturalised edible trees that are suitable for this purpose. I can say from my experience converting both my front and back yard into a forest garden that it is very satisfying to pick apples, pears, mulberries, stone fruits like plums, cherries, and apricots, various berries, grapes, arctic kiwi, heartnuts and hazelnuts, shiitake, oyster and wine cap mushrooms, rhubarb, lovage, and many other herbs and annual vegetables from within 10 metres of my kitchen.

To help Ottawa’s residents also adapt food-bearing trees and shrubs to urban spaces, FCF has created examples of typically sized urban yards that demonstrate how people can convert lawns into beautiful edible landscapes featuring fruit tree guilds and native perennial flowers. While our main directive is to mitigate the effects of climate change by facilitating the planting of forests and raising awareness of the importance of trees and biodiversity, we see an excellent opportunity for property owners to convert lawns to a more biodiverse space that has the added bonus of supplying some food.

This coming year—2023—promises a very rapid trajectory of growth for both trees and of the Forêt Capitale Forest organisation. We look forward to events with the NCC, EnviroCentre, Tree Canada (FCF serves as their Forestry Specialist alternate in this region), CAFES, and the growing FCF volunteer community. We will develop our interpretive walking path at our base of operations and host many guided tours. In summary, we continue to fulfil our desire to create newly forested areas in the National Capital Region and engage the community in every stage, “Launch and Learn”, “Surviving and Thriving”, “Free to Grow” and “Assess and Adjust”. 

To learn more about our public events and tours, please consider signing up as a volunteer, or subscribing to our public calendar, both available from our website at foretcapitaleforest.ca. We believe that community is key when it comes to urban forestry and we hope you will join our growing FCF community to create green spaces for everyone to enjoy.

Near-term Upcoming events:

Apr 22, 2023- Right Tree, Right Location: Orientation and practical tips set the stage for a workshop in the Hendrick Farm community on best practices for healthy trees. Register here if you're interested in attending!

Apr 28, 2023- Spring Tasks in the Food Forest: A ‘all-hands on deck’ work bee to apply compost and mulch to trees and shrubs in the community food forest, remove any remaining tree guards, inspect for disease or damage and overall assessment for the start of the growing season.

May 13, 2023- Seedling Saturday at Just Food Community Farm: Food forest seedling sale and swap, along with tours of the community food forest and Tiny Forest demonstration plots.

Shelley Lambert is a Director of Foret Capitale Forest, the chief Food Forester at Nanabush Food Forests and also serves on the Birch Path Healing Forest committee. She is passionate about creating spaces that feed bodies, minds and spirits and sharing those spaces with all creatures.