By the end of this year, Woolwich Township will be a little more green. Bring Back the Maples is an ambitious project to plant 22,000 trees along 335 kilometres of township and regional roads by next year. The volunteer project is led by Mark Schwarz, who told CBC Radio's Fresh Air that he has watched trees disappear over the past three decades.
"When we moved to Woolwich 33 years ago, on our road there were approximately 45 maples, which is not a lot over five kilometres and they gradually died out until there were two left and then they took the last two out," he said. "We thought how can we start restoring these maples and other native trees to the roadside. So that was the genesis of the project.
" The group's original plan relied on conventional methods that proved overwhelming. "Our first draft project plan cost around $8 million. We were trying to do all the rural roadsides in Woolwich and it would have taken 15 to 20 years.
That was kind of our starting point using the current technology or construction approach used by most municipalities." Schwarz said. By shifting away from traditional planting methods to reforestation practices, they reduced the projected cost to $350,000.
Rather than using more mature trees, the new approach utilizes smaller seedlings or plugs, significantly lowering transportation and planting costs. "We started at $500 to $800 a tree using typical urban tree planting approaches and now, using reforestation methods, we're down to $15 a tree," he .
