Won’t be easy to add 10,000 trees a year
Planting 10,000 trees a year, which has been proposed in Saanich, would be the easy part.
Keeping those trees maintained and alive for the first seven years would be cost prohibitive if Saanich employees were involved.
A new tree needs to be watered at least five times by hand a year for the the first five years for it to establish in a streetscape or park if irrigation is not present. An employee may be able to water 70 trees a day so that is 143 employee days to water 10,000 trees just once.
Then the next year another 10,000 trees come on line while the first year trees still need watering. At Year 4, 40,000 trees would need to be watered and maintained.
The reason why the City of Victoria could not change their residential garbage collection to a mechanical arm on the truck dumping the wheelie bin was the high frequency of conflict between the arm movement and the existing street plant tree canopy.
Not sure why the Saanich Parks management could not advise Saanich mayor and council of the concerns and limitations … then Saanich Planning could also speak how the impact of garden suites and infill construction restricts future planting on private residential properties.
Better use of mayor and council’s time would be to control cost of service delivery and the swell of new exempt employees being hired, which vastly exceeds the growth of the municipality’s population.
Bryan Taylor
Saanich
https://www.timescol...ol-deer-6726198