On Saturday October 26, Vauxhall Park was the site of our annual multicultural planting, bringing together hundreds of people, both longtime residents of London and new ones, to plant 409 trees along the trail. We began by sharing stories about the meaning of trees across cultures, then let everyone loose to find their own meaning among the hundreds of trees to be planted. The shovels hit the ground just as the last of the ice from the previous night’s frost was disappearing, and before long we had the best tree-planting day we could possibly ask for. By the morning’s end, many trees stood together where so many people had huddled against the cold before. We hope that over the course of the day, our volunteers found or created connections with each other and all the other forms of life they’d shared the day with.

A huge thank you to the Department of Canadian Heritage and the TD Friends of the Environment Foundation for funding this planting event. Another big thank you goes to LUSO, our primary volunteer organization in our multicultural plantings, and to the six other community groups who joined us to be part of this day. We hope everyone planted their roots here as firmly and deeply as they planted the trees’!