Tree shortages prompt London to study possibility of operating municipal nursery

If London is to continue living up to its title as the Forest City, it will need to make significant investments in tree planting over the coming decades.

However, it’s becoming more difficult and costly for city hall to source enough native trees from suppliers each year.

“The issue is that every municipality in Ontario and Canada is planting trees,” explains Coun. Skylar Franke. “There are incentives to plant trees and sometimes we run into issues where we don’t have the [native] species in the stock available to us from the market.”

Achieving London’s tree canopy target of 34 per cent coverage by 2065 will require planting at least 6,000 standard size trees (50-millimetre stock) on municipal property each year for of the next two decades.

The current cost to plant those 6,000 trees each year is approximately $3.2 million ($530/tree), which includes the cost of the tree, planting, and aftercare.

Those trees are planted along boulevards, around new infrastructure projects, and in parks and natural areas.

In 2024, Franke suggested city hall investigate opening its own tree nursery as a way to lower costs for taxpayers.

Two years later, a new staff report to the Community and Protective Services (CAPS) Committee recommends hiring a consultant, “to undertake a technical feasibility study for the establishment of a municipally-operated tree nursery for the purposes of growing caliper-sized trees for planting on city owned lands.”

“We do need a feasibility report,” explained Franke. “Then it would come in the multi-year budget process depending on what council chooses, whether it’s a municipal tree nursery or we contract it out locally.”

The feasibility study will also investigate municipal tree nurseries in other cities including two in Wellington County that are used for municipal planting as well as sales/giveaways to residents.

Windsor’s tree nursery has become a major source of trees for that municipality’s boulevards and parks.

If Council launches the feasibility study, a consultant’s report would be prepared for April 2027.

Franke emphasizes that a tree nursery would take time to begin filling local demand, “If we move forward with a municipal tree nursery, the trees take about 5 to 7 years to get to the point where we plant them in a boulevard.”

Conducting the feasibility study:

• determines whether a city-owned, operated tree nursery is practical and achievable
• evaluates the advantages and disadvantages of outsourced/contracted versus in-house tree growing
• identifies economic, non-economic and long-term benefits of a city-owned, operated tree nursery
• investigates opportunities to source locally
• improves access to and control of tree stock
• provides recommendations for cost-effective, sustainable tree-growing and sourcing options
• considers long-term tree-planting needs forecasts

The CAPS Committee will consider the report recommending a feasibility study on June 8.