Hampton Park's trees welcome 50 people to walk and talk

The roar of Ottawa’s biggest highway, the 417, accosted 50 people who gathered Sunday afternoon for a Walk with BIG TREES at the southern tip of Hampton Park.

But within minutes of entering the park on a leaf-strewn path, the highway’s noise was no more. Trees did their job of buffering the din of urban hustle-and-bustle. This made it possible to turn our ears and eyes to Owen Clarkin, the afternoon’s engaging tree identifier. We visited small and large trees, and learned which are native species and which are-- in Owen’s words--becoming naturalized in an environment not native to their species.

Hampton Park has an impressive diversity of beautiful trees.

As the afternoon came to a close, Daniel Buckles, who has a backyard nursery of bur oak saplings in Champlain Park neighbourhood, talked about heritage trees in Ottawa and provided a handout (PDF) on this subject. He also described results of a tree inventory (PDF) completed for 1/5th of that neighbourhood by volunteer tree mappers. A second infographic (PDF) from that inventory assigns economic value to the mapped trees.

Andrea Prazmowski described the work she is doing as a forest therapy guide, and spoke, too, about the economic value and benefits of trees in an urban landscape. She cited a recent study by the University of New Brunswick showing that among 1.3 million Canadians from 30 of our largest cities, those who live near greenery live longer.

In fact, big trees in urban parks and neighbourhoods provide the most benefit and economic value, says the Toronto Dominion Bank's 2014 study of Toronto's urban canopy.

"Not all trees are created equal, and the benefits they provide vary, depending on size and species. But, as a general rule of thumb, we can say bigger is better. Large, healthy trees absorb up to 10 times more air pollutants, 90 times more carbon, and contribute up to 100 times more leaf area to our urban forest canopy relative to smaller trees (see Table 3). "