We had perfect weather last Sunday for compost, ribbon-cutting, tree-planting, and refreshing homemade lemonade by Pat and Olivia Santos. We even sold some T-shirts and the last of our custom roasted coffee by Dark City!

The new accessibility path and stairs for Fred Hamilton Park is a beautiful and functional walkway connecting George Ben Park and Roxton Road with the upper part of Fred Hamilton Park and the washroom building. No more crumbling steps and muddy tracks! Fencing will stay up a bit longer to allow the new turf  to get established. As you’ll see in the photos below, the retaining stones on both curves of the path will make for lovely additional park seating as well – a bonus. Special thanks to Councillor Mike Layton, who not only attended the ribbon-cutting, but rolled up his sleeves and did some clean-up and tree planting as well!

Under Adam Vandermeij’s expert guidance, (and with the help of many enthusiastic kids) we planted three of the 22 new trees that have been earmarked for our parks. Of the 22, eleven have been adopted through our Adopt-a-Tree program. The three planted Sunday were a Sweet gum (adopted by Tim Posgate), Tulip tree (adopted by Adam Vandermeij), and White oak (adopted by Amanda Rosenthal). All the trees are native to Ontario and should thrive in their conditions.  The adopters will water them throughout the growing season using a cart, jug and hose which have been acquired by FoRRP through donations and fundraising efforts and events. Many thanks to our wonderful adopters and supporters.

More photos from the event below. Thanks to Bob Pritchard for organizing the event, to Homegrown National Park rangers Aidan and Andrea for providing information on their projects, and to the Toronto Seed Library for participating with their own wonderful initiative. Stay tuned for info on our “kid-FRED-ly” event in June!

Thanks to Bob Pritchard, Shani Parsons, Jill Cuthbertson, and Pat Santos for the great photos.