Staff and students celebrate new tree nursery at Granite Ridge

Jun 19, 2014

Students and staff at the Granite Ridge Education Centre in Sharbot Lake gathered for a special ceremony celebrating the recent planting of the school’s new tree nursery. Shawn Lavender, who teaches the Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM) program at the school, invited grade nine students in the SHSM forestry program to speak about the new nursery, where the students planted dogwood, sugar maple, and white pine trees. One of the goals is to replace each tree that was cut down during the construction of the new school with 15 new trees.

The project, which was funded with the help of grants from the Limestone Learning Foundation, the TD Bank’s Environmental Fund and Lowe's of Kingston, who donated the sawmill to the school, is part of the provincial government’s goal to plant 50 million new trees in the province. The nursery project was chosen by Lavender to allow students in the SHSM program at Granite Ridge to acquire skills and knowledge in sustainable economic and social activities.

Each grade nine student in the SHSM program was invited to plant one tree with a 3D label attached with their name. The labels were designed by the students with the help of Ms. Hurley using the school’s new 3D printer. Mr. Murray, who runs the wood and auto shop programs at the school, had students create the wooden signs that identify the new nursery using wood from trees cut on site and cut on the school's own saw mill. The students prepared the site and planted it with 400 new seedlings.

At the ceremony, students Dustin Granlund and Nolan Teal spoke about how the new nursery “will allow for carbon at the equivalent of 100 plane trips from Montreal to Vancouver (the equivalent of 100 tons of carbon) to be captured from the atmosphere in a single tree’s life time.” Students Craig Schonauer and Bailey Green spoke about the other projects the students undertook in the program, which included their maintaining part of the Lanark Mazinaw Forest by clearing a 20-acre parcel and “stripping it of iron wood, striped maple and small white birch thereby enhancing the mass trees and encouraging their growth while maintaining a healthier forest for animals and nature lovers.”

Last to speak was forestry student Robert, who spoke about Granite Ridge's forest management plan and the nursery project whose goal was “to remove the undergrowth and invasive trees on the property and to open the area for mass canopy trees and encourage the growth and regeneration of sugar maples, pine and dogwood”.

Shawn Lavender led the presentation and thanked all of the students and staff involved in the project as well as staff and representatives from the LLF and the SHSM program, who were present at the event. They included Leslie Myles, Mike Sewell, John Chomitz and Shawn Lehman. Mr. Lavender concluded the presentation with the words, “I like to think that we are doing our part here at Granite Ridge though our tree planting and continued involvement with our community partners to improve the landscape and restore our area back to pre-European times. This is an initiative that the government has mandated in its forest operations and we would like to succeed in restoring pine back to 14% of our landscape from the 7% that it is today.” Following the presentation students and staff enjoyed an outdoor barbeque lunch at the new nursery site.