Do you want to grow thriving urban forests in your community?

Green Communities Canada (GCC) is inviting partners to join us to help establish mini forests in communities across Canada. We are looking for organizations to be a part of our application to the Urban Tree Planting stream of the 2 Billion Trees program for 2024.

The application aims to scale up our National Mini-Forest Pilot launched in 2022 — a project of Green Communities Canada executed jointly with Dougan and Associates, Wilder Climate Solutions, and Canadian Geographic. We provide the training and technical supports necessary for Local Partner Organizations to identify appropriate mini forest sites, prepare the site, and engage community volunteers for these exciting planting events. Learn more about the National Mini-Forest Program and why we need to grow our urban forests.

Urban Tree Planting Stream of the 2 Billion Trees Program 2024

Green Communities Canada will act as a lead applicant for an aggregated submission to the Urban Tree Planting Stream of the Federal 2 Billion Tree program. We will be responsible for ensuring project deliverables are met by providing:

• Ongoing guidance and logistical support to partners
• Administrative, educational, and professional supports, including online mini forest coordinator training, sample species lists, site preparation guidance, maintenance planning templates, and communications tools
• Mini Forest site installation funding (grants of ~15K per 100m2 site to be used as required for site implementation)
• Project reporting to the federal government

What you (prospective partner) need to do to bring the mini forest project to your community

Prospective local partners will be responsible for local project delivery including:

• Identifying a minimum of one publicly accessible site to be planted as a mini forest in 2024. Sites must be a minimum of 100m² and planted with a minimum of 300 trees. Funding values are based on these requirements.
• Partners may identify and be funded to implement multiple sites, and sites may be larger in scale and designed to accommodate more than 300 trees. Sites should be confirmed at least three weeks before grant application submission deadline.
• Identifying some degree of matching funding (ideally project partners will match each 15K grant contribution with a minimum of 7.5K in cash contributions, and 7.5K in-kind contributions per site).
• Securing volunteers, and plant stock to plant the site.
• Installing permanent signage at the site.
• Reporting project outcomes to GCC using templates provided.

Is your organization interested in implementing mini forests? We invite you to fill out the survey below to help identify opportunities to collaborate.  

Please note: Survey submission does not constitute a partnership commitment, or promise of funding from GCC.

The application to the 2 Billion Tree program requires sites to be identified, alongside the number of trees and a short list of potential species to be planted. We ask that partners only submit sites that are fairly certain to be planted in 2024.  Should contexts change, and sites change from that which were submitted in the final application, partners would remain responsible for planting the allocated trees in a newly identified site before grant deadlines.

We thank all those interested in supporting this project and will follow up directly with survey respondents.

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