Saving an oak forest – from bylaw enforcement

Eric Davies is one of Toronto’s most vocal advocates for the heritage oak trees that have managed to survive in this rapidly developing urban environment. For more than a decade, Eric has been collecting and propagating acorns from the city’s oldest oak trees and giving young trees to community projects, schools, residents’ associations, Indigenous land stewards, neighbours—basically, anyone who’s concerned about Toronto’s urban forest and wants to grow trees for the future.

Ironically, the mini-forest Eric has planted in front of the apartment building where he lives in Toronto’s west end is now under threat. The City has issued a Notice of Violation, ordering the vegetation—oak saplings and native perennials—cut to below 0.85 metres and the removal of the 100-year-old red oak log Eric salvaged, with permission, from the City’s forestry facility and that serves as a welcoming neighbourhood bench for passersby.

According to the Notice of Violation, the vegetation is “obstructing/encumbering/damaging/fouling” the street and the “decorative log” causes an “obstruction/nuisance/dangerous condition.”

Like most front-yard gardens in the city, Eric’s planting is on the municipal right-of-way, what’s known as the street allowance, which in small Toronto yards can extend to the porch or house. Perhaps most residents who garden in their small front yards aren’t aware that a significant portion of their planting is actually an encroachment. Indeed, most gardeners care for these right-of-way spaces with impunity. In Eric’s case, most likely someone complained. This triggered an inspection, a Notice of Violation, and an order to cut the trees and plants down to 0.85 metres within seven days or face “further enforcement measures,” including a fine.

Given the City’s goal of increasing the tree canopy to 40 per cent by 2050, one might expect that Eric’s mini-forest would be embraced, not threatened with destruction. Along with his own front-yard contribution to the tree canopy, Eric has given away thousands of oak trees for others to plant. But the value of what he’s doing goes far beyond numbers alone: by propagating acorns from the city’s old-growth oaks, he is preserving the irreplaceable genetics of heritage trees before they succumb to old age, the degraded conditions of the city’s ravines and natural areas, and to development. Eric is a champion of the future forest, preserving through propagation the unique adaptations to local conditions that these oak trees contain in their genetic make-up. Climate change and biodiversity loss add urgency to the crucial work Eric is doing.

The order to cut down to 0.85 metres the oak saplings and the dozens of native perennials Eric has planted with them and that naturally grow in association with oak trees, is an order to cut down a regenerating oak ecosystem. This ecosystem has much in common with the rare oak savanna in High Park, which the City has committed to protecting. Eric’s planting is one piece in what could be—should be—a matrix of oak ecosystem protection in the city.

The Notice of Violation would be understandable if the planting interfered with sightlines or if the log obstructed passage on the sidewalk. But they don’t. The planting is set back at least four feet (1.2 metres) and the log 12-15 inches (30 to 40 cm) from the sidewalk. The sightlines are clear. Nearby, throughout the neighbourhood, are large City-planted street trees, and gardens with plants higher than 0.85 metres in the municipal road allowance. As with Eric’s planting, these feature safety, the ability to see past the trees, and carefully nurtured growth.

The City recently revised its “grass and weeds” bylaw in an effort to support biodiversity and naturalized yards. Eric’s is a banner project in support of these twin, connected goals. Unfortunately, it’s also a banner example of how bylaw enforcement continues to be a problem—whether through the mistaken identification of native plants as prohibited plants or, as in Eric’s case, through claiming there are public safety hazards when there aren’t (indeed, quite the reverse: Eric’s planting contributes to the health of the city and all its inhabitants).

Now that the City has updated its “grass and weeds” bylaw, what needs changing are bylaw enforcement policies. Quite simply, the City needs to stop placing barriers and threatening to punish those who are trying to protect our collective future.

Lorraine Johnson’s most recent book is A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee: Creating Habitat for Native Pollinators, co-authored with Sheila Colla.