More than 40 volunteers helped plant 300 trees at Baikie Island Nature Preserve on Sunday.
Greenways Land Trust hosted the event, which was part of the Canada-wide TD Tree Days. It was the fifth year that volunteers were at Baikie Island, a City of Campbell River restoration project, to help bring some life back to the estuary.
“We’re still working away on that,” said Cynthia Bendickson, executive director, Greenways Land Trust. “There’s still lots of work do to.”
But planting trees is a great place to start.
“Just planting trees in general is really awesome for the environment,” she said. “It’s really nice to be able to provide events that allow people to you know, think global, act local, and get all those trees planted that we really need to have for the future.”
Volunteers worked quickly this year, planting the majority of the trees in just 1.5 hours.
For Campbell River teen Shea Watson, the event was about giving back.
“I just wanted to do something good for our community,” she said as she and her friend Delaney Ewing spread mulch around some freshly planted trees.
“It’s really fun,” said Ewing.
Across the country, TD Tree Days will see more than 38,000 trees planted.
While the event is promoted by TD Bank and its employees, a lot of families with no relation to the bank were taking part.
They were planting a mix of native tree and shrub species this year including: Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, Western red cedar, Western hemlock, red flowering currant, snowberries, Nootka Rose, oceanspray.
“We really like to plant some of the shrubs particularly at the beginning of a restoration to start getting some berries and some flowers out there for the wildlife,” said Bendickson.
Since it was the fifth year for tree planting at the preserve, the focus this time was on filling in some areas that needed extra attention.
“Baikie Island, it’s just letting it grow,” said Bendickson. “It looks amazing even compared to when I started working down here you know six or seven years ago. It’s really grown up.”
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