Toronto 88 Queen | 167.35m | 52s | St Thomas Dev | Hariri Pontarini

June 3, 2021

Dead trees, hideous garbage bins, overly hardscaped, no water feature, benches arranged a heap of dirt with sh*tty plantings that’s supposed to be some sort of focal point, shadowed, forlorn, devoid of people.

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Ok.........

I got to check out this space on my walk yesterday; finally.

I'll stand by Cormier on the paving stones and the gist of the design, given the space allotted.

I must say though..........the tree problem is worse than I imagined.

I went through and looked at them.

I would rate 4 as ''healthy'; 2 as 'fair' (a bit stressed but viable)..........the other....2/3 of all the trees are either dead or on death's door, and they aren't coming back.

Healthy Birch:

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Dead/dying Birch (most of them)

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The planting bed isn't looking terrible..........but not great either.........

It's still early, and many of the plants are immature.

But it strikes me as a really odd mix of stuff. I can't ID a few of them.

The mini-trees in the planting beds are almost certainly a variety of Japanese Maple.

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The 2 evergreen shrub species are a variety of yew and common juniper and both look happy.

Yew

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Juniper:

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The yellow flower, I think is some kind of brassica (mustard family), but I'm not sure which one.

The Hostas and the grass species also look fine.

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I'll take a wait and see approach on the rest.

On the furniture..........the back rests aren't super comfortable. (for benches)
 
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there is an app called plantSnap, lets you identify trees and flowers. few months ago my brother and i were shopping for a nice tree for our backyard, Plant Snap really helped us identify trees around town.
 
there is an app called plantSnap, lets you identify trees and flowers. few months ago my brother and i were shopping for a nice tree for our backyard, Plant Snap really helped us identify trees around town.

Online plant ID can be helpful.

I tried one for a couple of things I took pics of and wasn't certain about.

The brassica got a 72% match for Sinapis arvensis which has a huge range of common names ( Charlock mustard, California Rap, Corn Mustard, Kaber Mustard, Canola).

Looks plausible. But I've tested the same program on plants I'm certain about and it sometimes gets it wrong. So I wouldn't be 100% on it.

A couple of the other species I tried didn't get better than 3% match.

Not one I'm going to bother emailing the experts on.
 
I like the public space. Nice and shady, at least in the afternoon, lots of (comfortable) seating - things that I enjoy at least. If they can fix their tree issues and have them grow out for a few years it will be nice as the space grows with the remainder of the complex being completed. Here are some pictures, not of the public space, but of the construction. Sunday, July 4th:

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What's with the broken concrete slab at the bottom of first pic?
This…
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doesn't so much look broken to me as it appears to be all the concrete that was poured into the form that day. With rebar protruding from the top, they'll be able to complete that pour when they create the next form to link in whatever that wall will be supporting there.

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Yesterday evening;

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Aug 19
It been said that the site will be fully a grade come Nov with the north end many floors above grade
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