QUINTE WEST — Volunteers with the Rotary Club of Trenton put spade to earth Sunday to help green the shoreline of the Trenton Greenbelt Conservation Area.
About 35 members of the club and other volunteers planted 370 native trees and shrubs and 240 wildflowers along a popular 2.5-kilometre stretch of the Trent River. The project is funded by the province’s Great Lakes Guardian Community Fund, which provided $17,053 to purchase the trees and other ingredients.
“The public green space located at the mouth of the Trent River on the Bay of Quinte is in poor ecological health with many sections of the Conservation Area consisting of mowed lawn, invasive plants, and few native species, which makes for poor quality shoreline habitat,” Lower Trent Conservation states in a media release.
The hope is that the ‘Greening the Greenbelt’ project will boost biodiversity, enhance shoreline habitat, increase public enjoyment of the public green space, and help build a resilient natural area along a 300-metre section of the shoreline, they add.
Some of the volunteers assisted through the Highway of Heroes Living Tribute, a restoration project to plant 117,000 trees between Trenton and Toronto — one for each Canadian that has ever served in the Armed Forces. Highway of Heroes partners, Vineland Research & Innovation Centre and Landscape Ontario, have provided Lower Trent Conservation with soil analysis and remediation advice to improve tree survival.
Last spring, Rotary Club members planted 250 native trees and shrubs. Sunday’s work represented the completion of the restoration project.
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