OLDS — About 55 people got together to plant trees along the northern border of Rotary Athletic Park on Friday, Oct. 28.
That group included École Deer Meadow School (ÉDMS) students, students and staff from the Olds College of Agriculture & Technology, Rotary Club members, and town staff.
In total, Olds received 126 free trees for a project to test the hardiness of the trees for our harsh growing climate.
Four communities are involved in the project throughout the province. The other three are Red Deer, Calgary and Edmonton.
During Friday's event, 75 trees were planted by members of the above group along the Olds Creek, as it winds along the northern edge of the Rotary Athletic Park.
Plans called for the remaining trees to be planted at the off-leash dog park and the cemetery, possibly as soon as this week. Twenty-six are slated to be planted in the cemetery and the remaining 25 in the dog park.
Bobbi Jo Russell, the town’s parks supervisor, said one of the trees slated for the cemetery is a columnar crab apple tree.
“It’s a beautiful, brilliant purple colour and I’m really excited to see how it’s going to work out out there,” she said.
Russell said the trees were provided to the town free of charge via a collaboration between Landscape Alberta and a tree nursery group.
During an interview with the Albertan, Russell said the deal is that in exchange for delivery of the trees, the town plants, monitors and cares for them for five years, plus provides annual reports on their progress.
She said it’s kind of pilot program to test how these trees will survive, as many have been modified to withstand the harsh Prairie climate.
The trees planted along the creek Oct. 28 included varieties of aspen, alders – even maple and oak.
Holes were dug the previous week just to loosen up the soil and make it easier for Friday’s planting.
Russell and Jim Crawford of the Rotary Club of Olds said the tree-planting project is a kind of convenient extension of the Rotary Club’s plan to plant hundreds of trees in the area.
Crawford said that project is expected take about three years to complete.
Initial planting for that project was undertaken about a month ago by the Rotary Club of Olds, town officials and other volunteers.
Earlier in the month, other tree plantings were undertaken throughout town, including some Colorado spruce that were planted in the bottom of the western slope of the new toboggan hill in Rotary Athletic Park.
The trees may be free for the town, but they’re not free to grow.
Russell estimated each tree, which stands six feet or higher already, probably would cost $125 to $200 each retail.
“The best way to grow a tree is in the fall, really water that in, so in the spring, it has available water to it.
“We’re going to be watering these trees for the next couple of weeks, just making sure that they have enough available water,” Russell said.
"The fact they’re right on the edge of a creek is also fantastic, just because they have water they can pull from the soil already.
“So it’ll be interesting. I’m really excited to see how this works out.
“You need water, you need good soil and nutrients, and you need fertilizer of some sort. So we’ll make sure that our water is fertilized so that these guys have the best chance (of surviving),” she added.
Crawford said the Rotary Club was pleased to be approached by the town to plant these trees and happy to work with them on the project.
“It’s great that the town is working with us so well as far as watering and providing soil for us," he said.
“When we did the initial tree planting, we thought those were going to be the only trees this year.
“We just know that we want to enhance the park. And to do that, we just felt that we needed some trees around for wind protection, just to make it look nicer.
“We still have, we believe, hundreds of trees and shrubs left to put in there. But we’re trying to source them as locally as we can.
"The response from citizens has just been fantastic. So many people have told us, ‘well, you know, we’ve got (these) kind of trees at our place. If you want to come and dig them (out), they’re yours’ and that kind of thing.”
Crawford was also grateful to receive the help of ÉDMS students as well as the Olds College students and instructors.
“Those kids, they just bore down; they worked. It was great. They helped a lot, they really sped up the process,” he said.
ÉDMS Grade 8 student Ryder Karmazinuk was among those helping out in the project.
Karmazinuk was asked what he thought about it.
“It’ll be good for the environment. Like, planting more trees is better,” he said, noting that trees pull in carbon dioxide and produce oxygen.
Karmazinuk said it was “fun” to be outside helping out.
He was asked which was harder – digging out the holes or planting the trees.
He said since the trees are “pretty heavy,” both are about equally hard.
