Southland Park Tree Planting - Environmental Project

Ben 's second event as part of his World Conservation Badge was a tree planting project down at the Southland Park. The City of Calgary, through the Adopt-A-Park program, arranged with us to do this project.  

We started the event with a quick stop to get donuts. All workers need a Coffee Break so we wanted to be prepared. Then we met up with Ken at 9:30 at the parking lot. He was all loaded up with everything you could think a team would need. Ken's volunteer teams were working to help re-establish the river bank area that had been washed away due to flooding the 2 years before. The banks had already had work done on them by putting down matting and taking long thin Poplar and Willow branches and pushing them into ground through the netting. So we did not know you could take a stick, no roots, push it into the ground that they start to grow. 

He then instructed us on plant technique. You did a hole the depth of the pot, make it as close to the diameter as the tree you're planting. Seem the there is a temporary stop to the growing cycle every time the tree roots go through a different layer of soil. IE: the undisturbed  section beyond the hole, the area of dirt used to fill the hole. So if push the tree up against one side of the hole and the fill the remaining area (leaving no air pockets as this would fill with water later and cause molding), packing it down tightly. The top of the plant soil should be 2 inched below the ground to provide a well for water to collect. 

The then went to work. Turns out the soils is quite rocky so the digging was a bit of a challenge. We started to get a bit of rain around lunch so the team headed off to IKEA to a Swedish lunch. Came back and the sun was out again and we went back at it. This time we tried a pick axe to this stubborn holes. We made it to about 3pm and the boys were bushed. Ken passed out these seed pack for native Calgary wild flowers for their appreciation of out efforts. 

We added to that appreciation with a trip to DQ and cooled down with some nice ice-cream.