Montreal wants more businesses to plant trees

The City of Montreal wants to plant more trees on its territory, and is calling on businesses to help the plan take root.

In April, the city announced it wanted to accelerate tree planting by incentivizing business owners to plant trees on their property, offering to foot 50 per cent of the bill.

"We know that trees offer many advantages for cities," said Villeray-Saint-Michel-Parc-Extension Mayor Laurence Lavigne Lalonde.

"They help us diminish heat islands," she said, adding that trees improve air quality and help drain rainwater.

Lavigne Lalonde said the city has planted 180,000 of the 500,000 trees it hopes to plant by 2030 and has exhausted most of the easy space for planting, such as parks and public spaces.

She added that the goal is to plant in areas with a lot of concrete, and city officials have contacted various businesses about the initiative.

It also aims to provide a canopy of shade over 26 per cent of the city.

"We have been working with companies, industries, institutions for a few years to plant on their land," she said. "We're broadening our demineralization program to make sure they can apply for those funds to do those kinds of projects on their land."

Better ways to fight climate change: professor

However, Cynthia Kallenbach, associate professor in the Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences at McGill University, feels that there are better ways to adapt the city to climate change.

Firstly, she said most of the heat islands in Montreal are not on private property or business-owned land. They are in public places, which are mostly already vegetated.

"I'm not sure how much planting trees on private property is going to resolve that issue of lowering the temperature, providing shade, cooling the city during hotter periods of the summer," she said.

She acknowledges the benefits of planting trees on business property, such as their aesthetics and adding habitats for insects and animals.

"If commercial spaces are maybe changing some of their driveways or pavement or cement to plant trees, that could increase filtration of water. It could provide habitat that otherwise wouldn't be there for increasing biodiversity," she said.

A better environmental strategy, said Kallenbach, would have been to incentivize businesses to plant gardens on their property rather than trees.

She believes the costs of maintaining trees may drive businesses away from the initiative.

The main issue, though, is the ever-increasing flooding in Montreal due to climate change. Kallenbach feels gardens are much more effective.

"Rain gardens, deep-rooted plants, grasses that are water-tolerant: those can do a lot for mitigating flood risk," she said. "They also, in some cases, can be very powerful at sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere because a lot of that carbon is stored underground in the roots of grasses."

Not everywhere is a great spot for trees, she said, adding that the best course of action is to have as much variety as possible when greenifying spaces.