Trees for a healthier living: GentleWays’ commitment
GentleWays for OurPlanet is dedicated to helping rebuild Ottawa’s urban forests. In partnership with the City of Ottawa, Ecology Ottawa and with the support from our community, we are committed to adding as many trees as possible into Ottawa’s plantable spaces.
Reforestation creates so many ecological and community benefits. Trees are the beautiful pillars of life on Earth: cleaning the air we breathe, cooling down our cities and providing homes for countless people and animals.
Our next tree-planting event
Looking ahead, we aim to organize our third tree-planting event next fall, continuing our efforts to make Ottawa greener and more sustainable.
Our latest tree planting event was in October 2023 in collaboration with the city of Ottawa. It was a very successful event at Mowat Farm Park in Barrhaven where our volunteers planted 250 trees. This event was a significant step in our ongoing effort to enhance Ottawa’s urban forests.
Follow us on IG for more updates on our next tree-planting event.
Some info on trees and their impact on everyone
Neighbourhoods with healthy tree populations are even shown to have less incidences of violence. Trees and forests are playing and will play a determinant role in climate change mitigation. According to research made by Tree Canada Foundation, “the average Canadian tree will sequester about 200 kg C over an 80-year period in an urban environment”. This means that as we continue to passionately support tree-planting projects, we are protecting not only our communities but also the entire planet.
The Two Billion Trees initiative
Recognizing these values, the Canadian government has launched four years ago an exciting initiative to plant 2 billion trees over the next 10 years to help restore degraded ecosystems. This renewed forest cover will be essential for Canada’s long-term vision for a sustainable future. GentleWays for OurPlanet has explored partnership opportunities with the vision of planting a very large number of trees under this initiative. Any initiative under this program would have to be in collaboration with the municipality of Ottawa. We also learned about new and innovative planting methods such as the Miyawaki forest. This method, being implemented so far in Kingston, Cornwall and Ottawa, enables forestation and eco-system restoration within shorter periods of time compared to traditional planting methods.
In the meantime, we offer our supporters two easy ways of planting trees: One via the app, i4ThePlanet, and the second through our annual planting events, as presented above.
Planting trees through the app: i4ThePlanet
Through a creative and simple new mobile app called i4ThePlanet, users can record and redeem their daily ecological actions to plant real trees! From a catalogue of 122 GHG reducing, pro-environmental actions under six categories: Food, Fashion/Electronics, Materials, Travel/Energy, Wellness and Leadership, users can select and complete whatever actions they want to perform every day and collect stars. Those stars can be redeemed to contribute to real trees planted in Ottawa at the low price of 1,75$ each, directly paid to Ecology Ottawa. These trees are given away by Ecology Ottawa every year, to homeowners in Ottawa.
Get i4ThePlanet on your iPhone here
Get i4ThePlanet on your Android here
In 2022, Ecology Ottawa provided 20,000 free seedlings throughout the year for individuals to plant on private property to help rebuild Ottawa’s tree canopy. The Emerald Ash borer is a highly destructive beetle that feeds under the bark of ash trees. The Emerald Ash Borer has killed 25% of existing trees in Ottawa over the past few years!