Toronto Love Park | 3m | 1s | City of Toronto | CCxA

Grateful there are mature trees incorporated into this. Really highlights how few of them there are in the city outside of the side streets.
There are lots of mature trees in parks but very few on streets for the reason that until very recently the City planted street trees in what amounted to 'coffins' and, even if not confined, the roots tend to get disturbed very often by the incessant utility work that goes on. (To say nothing about salt, pollution, bicycles tied to them and general vandalism.)
 
We could have much better street trees on major streets by planting them in Silva cells and installing irrigation. Even the trees in the "tree coffin" concrete planters grow better when they're watered regularly.
 
We could have much better street trees on major streets by planting them in Silva cells and installing irrigation. Even the trees in the "tree coffin" concrete planters grow better when they're watered regularly.

Silva Cells are increasingly standard, and exceptions usually have to do w/crowded utilities underground.

Irrigation still tends, more often that not to be for the first 2 years only (temporary).

Temporary is fine in low rise settings or mid-rise along wider roads where there is ample opportunity for rain to reach the plants in the longer term.

When surrounded by tall towers, especially on narrower roads a material portion of the rainfall never reaches sidewalk trees, and permanent irrigation would be preferable.
 
The Northern Catalpa in the island is definitely not in good health...........can't see if its dead..........but it should look more leafed out than that, by now!
😢 i hope they can save it, its a key feature of the park. a mature tree within the heart will look so cool
 
😢 i hope they can save it, its a key feature of the park. a mature tree within the heart will look so cool

I hope they can too. Replacing it with another large tree (it wouldn't be as large for sure) would be about $20,000 for the tree, but add several thousand for removal of the existing tree and grinding the stump. Maybe 30k all-in.
 
I hope they can too. Replacing it with another large tree (it wouldn't be as large for sure) would be about $20,000 for the tree, but add several thousand for removal of the existing tree and grinding the stump. Maybe 30k all-in.
The cost is one thing, placing the trees is another.

With the concrete wall pour, you will have to do it ASP as well building a road over it to plant the tree using a Holt 90-110 or lager. You still need a road over the wall to dig a hole and then place the tree with a crane if you can't use an Holt.

Finding a large tree and planting it could be in the range of $50,000 and will be smaller than what there now.
 
A few tree close ups.

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Looks like the Catalpa, tree farthest left in picture number 2 from the left, will be ok.......a bit pokey........still not as full as I'd like.................wow that one took awhile to leaf out!

Great shot, @achender !
Catalpa's are well known to be the last trees to bloom. Generally late spring early summer, over a 2 week period. I always thought mine was dead in the spring. I have 2 on my property.
 
Catalpas are well known to be the last trees to bloom. Generally late spring early summer, over a 2 week period. I always thought mine was dead in the spring. I have 2 on my property.

In an earlier post I noted just that; but I was expecting leaf out just a couple of days before it actually happened.

The Catalpas on my street started leafing out about June 2/3.
 
Last pics from Friday's walk found me here, so pics are from June 10th, 2022:

We'll look at the entire site, but with a bit of focus on the mature trees.

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In the pic above, the trees to the left and centre-left are indeed Chinese Elm, and it does look like they have Dutch Elm to me. Difficult to assess the overall state of those trees, but they will definitely look a bit rough this year.

The furthest tree (barely visible, against York St. is a Silver Maple)

The tree on the right is the one that will be on the Island in the water feature, the Northern Catalpa.

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Below a closer look at the Catalpa:

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Now a better look at the Chinese Elm:

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In the above, you can see the one to the left is looking rather rough, but still very much alive, Dutch Elm can be deceiving, I've seen trees look this bad and fully recover; but not always.

The ones on the right seem much less affected.

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Here we see (below) that the Catalpa is experiencing a small amount of die-back in the crown. I don't consider this something to be too worried about at this point, the tree looks pretty healthy over all;
could be an isolated injury to a branch, or just the stress of the construction, but should recover just fine.

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I feel like that little parcel of land the tree is on is going to be too irresistible for some not to walk through the water feature to sit on 😅.
 
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