From today’s Ottawa Citizen: “OTTAWA — The city is so serious about getting 100,000 trees planted that it’s now willing to deliver the trees right to your house. All you have to do is go to ottawa.ca/TREE or call 311, and you’ll be able to select the species of tree you want to plant on your property. They aren’t saplings, either: Each tree delivered under the program, aimed reforesting and enhancing tree cover in the city, is 1.5 to two metres tall. The trees are available on a first-come, first-served basis for June 2009 delivery. If the city runs out of trees, you can be placed on a list for delivery in the fall.” [bold text added by me — eric]

This is an interesting offer. Unfortunately I don’t have room on my city lot for another tree. But I do spy an interesting spot on city land that begs for trees. Readers familiar with Albert St will have noticed the landscaping along the new multipurpose path built last year from Bronson to Empress. It is wide, asphalt, and has trees planted on both sides of it. Nice trees too: a number of them are oaks and other hardwoods. Potentially, this path will look very nice as the trees grow and provide shade and separation from the commuter cars and buses. The path is even supplied with decorative pedestrian scaled path lighting, although they havent been turned on yet. That may have to wait until the politicians assemble for an opening ceremony and photo op.

Unfortunately, the treed section ends at Empress. Is this because they were only beautifying the sight line from the luxury condos built at the corner of Bronson, The Gardens? Or is it because this path was sketched in on the City’s Escarpment Community Development Plan and the water works folks delivered on what the plan dreamed of? In either case, they didnt plant any trees from Empress to Booth to Bayview.

I wrote to the City’s tree planting guru last fall suggesting planting along at least the north side of this section of path, but got no reply. I made the suggestion because acquaintenances at City Hall had said the city was having a hard time finding places to plant trees to meet their quota.

Despite the lack of answer, the probable answer will be “NO” because this section of Albert is subject to reconstruction (promised every few years since 1980), lacks a long term plan (darn, there’s the need for a CDP again … although the section from Booth to City Centre Ave is subject to the NCC’s LeBreton Flats master plan, not that that seems to help). I have no doubt that if this path was in the Glebe, there’d be trees there today.

So, back to the City offer of trees. Can a neighborhood association, volunteer group of gardeners, or the BIA actually get a few dozen of these trees to plant along the Albert St path? Anyone interesting in greening the City?