Infested ash trees are marked with a spray-painted X for removal at Glashan Public School.
A new greening initiative at Glashan Public School is expected to replace dead trees and create a new green space as part of a greater effort to make the inner-city school more welcoming for students.
The plan will begin with replacing trees that have died as a result of the emerald ash-borer, an invasive species that lives under the bark and feeds on ash trees.
“We want to have something that’s fairly large, on a scale that really would have some significance,” says Glashan Principal Jim Tayler.
The plan is to be formulated over the fall and implemented over the course of “the next few years,” Tayler says.
The middle school will work with the Ottawa school board and its partner, Evergreen, an organization that has worked with other schools on similar projects, to “professionalize” the plan and help attract potential funders
“It’s one way that we can make Glashan a greener, friendlier yard,” he says. More than a dozen trees need to be replaced along Catherine Street, next to the large chain-link fence.
The school’s yard is dominated by blacktop. Yellow picnic tables provide children a view of the busy street beyond the fence. Tayler hopes in the next few years students will be looking instead at thriving natural greenery.
The plan has emerged after the city added new safety measures at a major intersection adjacent to Glashan Kent and Catherine streets over the summer.
The enhancements will make the school safer and more accessible, Tayler says.
“The intersection at Kent and Catherine was always the one of greatest concern,” he says, because of the large number of children who cross every day.
The greening initiative will be spearheaded by parent and school council member Angela Keller-Herzog, whose son attends Glashan.
“We want our kids to grow up in a healthy environment,” she says. “So if we do things that can help them understand the environment better, and participate in the schoolyard greening project, I think that process itself will be positive.”
She stresses a balance between the pavement for basketball and a healthy “micro greenbelt” within the yard.
“The school is already fairly paved over and bleak,” she says. “We’re looking at the idea of having a ‘de-paving’ component.”
Keller-Herzog says she hopes that a group called Depave Paradise will be able to collaborate and possibly help fund the project. Depave Paradise is a project of Peterborough-based Green Communities of Canada, a national association of community organizations dedicated to helping projects like this succeed.
Keller-Herzog says she hopes grapevines can be planted along the chain-link fences and fruit trees in the yard.
She also expects to involve Ottawa-based organization Hidden Harvest Ottawa.
That organization sells food-bearing trees to communities with the goal of having easily accessible natural food and to help the environment.
It would be really great if kids not only planted little things in their science class, but also in their schoolyard, and have it flourish,” she says.
Glashan has applied to the City of Ottawa Schoolyard Tree Planting Grant Program for money to help plant the trees.
According to city spokesperson Courtney Ferguson, the final approval for applications will be announced March 1.