Winnipeggers appreciate our urban forest. Winnipeg’s tree canopy Winnipeg’s tree canopy covers an estimated 20-25% of our city (a more accurate calculation will be revealed in the city’s forthcoming State of the Urban Forest report) — more than double the coverage compared to other prairie cities, due to the extraordinary tree planting efforts since the establishment of Winnipeg.

Studies have shown Winnipeggers value our urban forests for their aesthetics, air quality, shade, naturalness and biodiversity, plus social values such as recreation and alternative uses.

Today, Winnipeggers across the city are taking up the challenge to save and build our canopy for the Winnipeggers that follow in our footsteps. 

Read what your friends and neighbours have done across the city! If you have a tree project your community is doing, please let us know! We’ll be adding new stories on a regular basis.

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  Local Research Spotlights Tree Inequity in Winnipeg
  We were honoured to take part in recent research on tree equity in Winnipeg, by Ian J Dyck, a Masters of City Planning student at the University of Manitoba – Faculty of Architecture. Congratulations, Ian, on completing this important research and helping to increase understanding…
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  Volunteers Plant 1000+ Trees on Churchill Parkway
  In mid-May, over four different days, about 80 community members with huge assistance from City staff planted over a thousand bare-root stock specimens on the Churchill Parkway, with the intent of replicating the river-bottom habitat, with understory, middle-story, small trees and big trees. It was…
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  Mapping & Mobilizing in Earl Grey
  I always knew that we had a Dutch Elm Disease problem in the city, and had seen the “red dots of death” for years. During the summer of 2020, however, I really became aware of the extent of the problem in our neighbourhood of Earl Grey.
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  A Giant Cottonwood Survives on Middle Gate
  If you look beyond the weeds and the illegal dumping at the bottom of Middle Gate, you will discover one of Armstrong’s Point’s hidden treasures. Here stands a massive cottonwood tree, largely unnoticed by the public but well-known to arborists. Until fairly recently it was part of a small grove of companion trees. Now it stands alone, a sole survivor.
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  Taking Up the Mantle: Kingston Crescent & Row Neighbours Rebuild a “City of Trees”
  Kingston Crescent/Row has seen a neighbourhood transition from one of beautiful mature trees to one with a constant thinning of that once-majestic canopy. Nothing less than a call to action was required.
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  Conversation into Action: How Riverview Residents Planted 55 New Boulevard Trees
  What began as an over-the-back fence conversation has blossomed into a community-wide effort to protect, restore and enhance the public tree canopy in Riverview.
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  Condo Dwellers Step Up to Re-wild the Seine River Greenway
  Residents at The Legend, a condo development on South St. Anne’s Road, approached Save Our Seine about planting shrubs and trees on city land next to their condo development. A perfect expanse on a curved pathway provided the locale for this endeavour.
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  How to Grow an Orchard in the Heart of a City
  This the story of the orchard we established on Churchill Drive Dike, an account of the mistakes we made, what we learned, and the changes we continue to make to develop the orchard into a healthy, low maintenance, permaculture food forest.
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  How SOS Saved the Bois-des-Esprits Forest
  For Save Our Seine (SOS), there is likely no greater feather in the cap than the jewel that is the “forest of spirits”, the Bois-des-Esprits. No single issue in SOS’ history took more out of its board than the fight to save the nearly 120-acre city forest from development.
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  Planting Cedars in North Point Douglas
  In North Point Douglas, we started planting cedars about 15 years ago. Some on our property, some on neighbours’ and some on boulevards. They cost about $15 in the fall.
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  Loving and Losing Winnipeg’s Urban Forest
  It’s early November 2016. It’s been unseasonably warm, but there are skins of ice on the puddles this morning, the kind that are wonderful to stomp. I’ve just dropped our daughter, Anna, at a friend’s house; Mike and I have a few hours to ourselves, so we’re going for a walk.
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  Boulevard Tree Banding: How The Wolseley Tree Bandits Get it Done!
  I’ve been a Wolseley tree bandit for as long as I can recall. In 2006 I was promoted to ‘chief-bandit’ by the Palmerston gang, a position I held for 11 years. My posse was about 50 strong, and our territory stretched the length of Palmerston…
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  When great trees fall in Armstrong’s Point
  The elm at the crossing of Blanchard and Middle Gate was the centre of the Armstrong’s Point neighbourhood. It finally gave way to Dutch Elm Disease and we watched as it was removed last fall. Soon after, Rod and Susan Reynar’s Cornish Ave. household held…
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  Tree art delights–and reminds us to cherish our urban canopy
  I love the way that people have found creative and beautiful ways to draw attention to the trees around us in our urban environment.
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  Peanut Park thrives with a little help from its friends
  The neighbours around Peanut Park first formed a tree committee when we created a non-profit association called “Friends of Peanut Park” and adopted “Enderton Park”, which is locally known as Peanut Park.  In the adoption arrangement with the city, we agreed to beautify the park…
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  Keeping the “elm” in Glenelm
  In the Glenelm neighbourhood of Elmwood, folks are extremely dismayed at how many of our majestic mature boulevard elms are being lost to Dutch Elm Disease every year. To add insult to injury, many of those removed trees are not being replanted. Our Trees Committee formed to come up with a plan to address these issues.