With the average Metro Vancouver tree living less than eight years, horticulturalists urge politicians to get out the message that trees need deep watering, even during restrictions.
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The average Metro Vancouver tree has a lifespan of less than eight years. That makes it even more important to preserve as many trees as possible, particularly those that are older.
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The startling statistic, from Brian Minter, a prominent B.C. horticulturalist, serves as a deadly warning: Metro Vancouver’s unusually early and severe watering restrictions are a threat to the region’s trees.
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Given that so many young trees in Metro Vancouver do not reach their tween years — mostly for lack of watering — Minter has come to think of the metropolis’s relatively few older trees as rare and precious “gold.”
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Minter’s concern exemplifies why some residents fight so hard to protect mature trees. After all, officials with Metro Vancouver’s municipalities often tell us trees are a boon to birds and insects, and a bulwark against global warming.
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Metro Vancouver lost one per cent of its tree canopy between 2014 and 2020, according to a regional district study. Just to restore what has been lost requires planting enough trees to cover about 19 square kilometres.
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So, in light of continuing dangers to trees, citizens from time to time rise up to stop an older tree from being chopped down. One of the latest examples of activism is in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Kitsilano, where neighbours are urging city officials to stop the chainsawing of a horse chestnut tree, which is more than 100 years old, on a private lot.
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The details are complicated. But suffice to say the goal of neighbours, in light of losing so many older trees to drought-like summers, is to protect at least one impressive specimen. It is, they say, a “heritage-scale tree that provides shade, climate resilience and documented habitat for a Cooper’s Hawk. Removing it works directly against the city’s own urban forest strategy goal of 30 per cent canopy cover by 2050.”
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The oft-pronounced goals of Metro Vancouver officials are similar to those of the citizens. Less than three blocks away from the at-risk chestnut tree is a newly revitalized green space with West Coast trees, plants and wild flowers, a project that cost more than $3 million.
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The lush area is dotted with signs extolling the virtues of reintroducing trees and plants, including as habitat for birds and pollinating insects and to help cool the area.
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So where does that leave us with Metro Vancouver’s Stage 3 watering restrictions, which, for starters, ban the watering of lawns? The restrictions were introduced earlier than ever, on June 8. And they dictate that “all sprinklers and soaker hoses are strictly prohibited for trees, shrubs, and flowers.”
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Bill Manning, retired director of horticulture for Vancouver parks, is among the experts who worry that many residents, and even city staff, will fail to properly water trees, especially the young ones.
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“The watering restrictions do affect the trees,” said Manning. If they are to survive, he said, immature trees need more than superficial watering. “They need slow, extensive watering to promote deep roots.”
