On summer days, you can expect to find people playing soccer, throwing frisbees and swimming at the Plouffe Park Recreation Centre.
Residents have also come to expect members of the adjacent Chinese community harvesting the seeds of the ginkgo trees surrounding the park.
But the recent redevelopment of the park’s soccer field could have brought an end to the seed-gathering ritual if not for the efforts of the Dalhousie Community Association and Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes to protect the area’s trees.
Holmes says the ginkgoes, slated for demolition as part of the lowering of the soccer field, were preserved because they have a well-known cultural role within the community.
“The cultural aspect was a major factor in the decision to move forward to get more ginkgoes planted because . . . it’s seen as being a benefit to the Chinese community,” Holmes says.
Ginkgo Biloba or Maidenhair trees – so named due to their soft-looking, fan-shaped leaves – produce nut-like seeds which are used by Asian communities for a variety of culinary and traditional medicinal purposes.
Eric Darwin, president of the Dalhousie Community Association, says it’s not uncommon to see members of the Chinese community picking the nuts.
“I think it’s a great character aspect to a neighbourhood when you see people doing this,”
Project manager Ravi Metha says since no members of the Chinese community attended the Plouffe Park open house meetings, it was through Holmes’s initiative that workers and engineers actively avoided the established trees.
“We wouldn’t have even known about these trees. Well, we would have known they were there, but we wouldn’t have known they were special unless she told us,” Mehta says.
Holmes says ginkgoes are also tough urban trees that fulfill several roles.
“(Ginkgoes are) a tree that’s very good at absorbing green-house gases so they act very well in downtown locations where there’s traffic,” Holmes says. “They are slow growing but they will be quite a large tree in their day and provide good shade and good air quality.”
As the lowered field will be used as a water storage basin, the well-watered, well-drained park provides an ideal environment for ginkgo trees.
Mehta says different designs were considered in order to preserve the trees.
The city decided to leave the ginkgoes at street level and start digging once they were a safe distance from the tree’s main roots.
“We had to trim some of the roots on some of the trees in order to fit the regulation-size soccer field in, but apart from that I think it went pretty well,” Mehta says.
He adds the only challenge was ensuring that all the trees planted were female as only female trees produce the seeds.
Darwin says the association would like to see more ginkgo trees planted as the city prepares a major road redevelopment along Somerset Street, which runs perpendicular to Preston Street.
“There’s a series of meetings on right now for improving the landscape (at Somerset and Preston streets). We hope to get a few more (ginkgo) trees in place.”
“It’s one of those little silent legacies that come out of good planning. That you get something that bears its benefits . . . years and years down the line.”