The North Bay-Mattawa Conservation Authority has opened up a Starter Tree Nursery on the banks of Chippewa Creek with the intent of fostering seedlings before replanting them around the area.
“There are grandparents and grandchildren here at the Starter Tree Nursery, located at the end of Second Avenue East at Chippewa Creek, who are planting 900 tree and shrub seedlings,” Sue Buckle, Manager of Communications and Outreach of the NBMCA said.
“These seedlings that they are planting will be used in locations throughout the city in public lands and for the North Bay-Mattawa Conservation Authority’s ‘Restore Your Shore’ where we do shoreline planting. It has been wonderful to have so many partners collaborate and come together to make this happen.”
The seedlings will grow next to Chippewa Creek for three to five years before being transported to their new homes on public lands, like city parks.
“We will have more than what we will immediately need here so some will be planted along shorelines and stream banks. It is really important to have vegetation and trees and shrubs along shorelines and streambanks because it helps prevent erosion, it helps prevent unwanted nutrients from making their way into the water. It will help protect the quality of the water, and also helps protect and enhance the aquatic habitat of those water bodies,” Buckle added.
Hariett Madigan, the lead of Clean, Green, Beautiful North Bay is also involved with Trees for Nipissing and helped to get this initiative off the ground.
“This goes back to 2004 and the city, the conservation authority and I did a walk along the Eco path and talked about what would be possible here and we talked about a tree nursery. That was when the seed was planted for ideas and in 2006 we planted 450 trees and 6,000 shrubs. Most of those have been relocated into parks around the city.”
There is another tree nursery on Hammond Street that has planted trees around Chippewa Creek and in parks around town as well. Not only that, but they supply trees to Restore Your Shore.
“There have been over 142 properties over the course of the last five years that have had plantings along their shoreline throughout our watershed from Mattawa to Powassan, North Bay, Bonfield, Corbeil, Callander. The Restore Your Shore program is free to property owners. We provide the plants, we provide the planning. It all begins with a call to our office and a site visit by one of our stewardship staff members, who does an assessment of the shoreline and bank to determine what types of plants are better suited and what the property owner’s preferences are,” Buckle added.
