{"id":87402,"date":"2026-06-13T21:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T21:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/87402\/"},"modified":"2026-06-13T21:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T21:33:12","slug":"tree-giveaway-aims-to-green-up-calgarys-canopy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/87402\/","title":{"rendered":"Tree giveaway aims to green up Calgary&#8217;s canopy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Calgary\u2019s tree canopy will be a little greener after Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Thousands of young trees are being given out to Calgarians through the Branching Out Tree Program, which held its third weekend at the Douglas Glen Park &amp; Ride lot for southeast residents.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cWe provide 10,000 trees to Calgarians in a bid to help increase our tree canopy from just under 10 per cent to 16 per cent,\u201d said Alan Joiner, superintendent with City of Calgary Urban Forestry.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Thirteen varieties are available, listed on the city\u2019s website, which were selected not only for their ability to thrive in Calgary, but also their availability.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cWe had to make sure we could provide the 10,000 trees, so we went with 13 species that the supplier had enough of,\u201d Joiner said. \u201cThere were some options available such as fruit trees, but they didn\u2019t have enough of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\" Michelle Conger picks out a Sensation Maple tree at the City of Calgary\u2019s Branching Out Tree Program giveaway on Saturday, June 13, 2026. At least 10,000 trees were given away with an eye to bolstering the city\u2019s tree canopy. Brent Calver\/Postmedia\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"720\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/9b7437ad195fc4d210f0859b1a4f2314.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p> Michelle Conger picks out a Sensation Maple tree at the City of Calgary\u2019s Branching Out Tree Program giveaway on Saturday, June 13, 2026. At least 10,000 trees were given away with an eye to bolstering the city\u2019s tree canopy. Brent Calver\/Postmedia<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Among those looking to fill out their foliage was Michelle Conger, who has seen some of their aging trees dying near the Bow River, bordering their neighbourhood of Douglas Glen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cTrees are expensive, so for the city to offer free trees, so that we can help expand the canopy, absolutely,\u201d said Conger, whose husband Greg expanded on the sentiment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cI think it\u2019s not only important for not only shade and beauty of the landscape, but for us it\u2019s blocking certain areas, it\u2019s good for the environment, so we have to start planting more trees,\u201d said Greg.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cAnd you don\u2019t want to live in a concrete city, you want the beauty of the trees growing all around you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Joiner added the City is rewriting its Urban Forestry Strategic Plan, and residents can weigh in on the program at calgary.ca\/urbanforestplan.<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\" Catherine Simoneau carries trees back to her truck from the City of Calgary\u2019s Branching Out Tree Program giveaway on Saturday. Brent Calver\/Postmedia\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"720\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/bacb54bb8878eb1893469036a6673dc1.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p> Catherine Simoneau carries trees back to her truck from the City of Calgary\u2019s Branching Out Tree Program giveaway on Saturday. Brent Calver\/Postmedia<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\" Greg Conger picks out a Sensation Maple tree at the City of Calgary\u2019s Branching Out Tree Program giveaway on Saturday. Brent Calver\/Postmedia\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"720\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/d712c33c1590bf943188491d99d4bc52.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p> Greg Conger picks out a Sensation Maple tree at the City of Calgary\u2019s Branching Out Tree Program giveaway on Saturday. Brent Calver\/Postmedia<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\" Thousands of trees were given away through the City of Calgary\u2019s Branching out Tree Program on Saturday, June 13, 2026. Brent Calver\/Postmedia\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"720\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1010695818272db0a5ac079367030c4e.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p> Thousands of trees were given away through the City of Calgary\u2019s Branching out Tree Program on Saturday, June 13, 2026. Brent Calver\/Postmedia<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\" Couples take home trees at the City of Calgary\u2019s Branching Out Tree Program giveaway on Saturday, June 13, 2026. Brent Calver\/Postmedia\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"960\" height=\"720\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"rounded-lg\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/40be9b8a9bc847fe90c93f53e39b8e00.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p> Couples take home trees at the City of Calgary\u2019s Branching Out Tree Program giveaway on Saturday, June 13, 2026. Brent Calver\/Postmedia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Calgary\u2019s tree canopy will be a little greener after Saturday. Thousands of young trees are being given out&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[33562,51,953,33563,28118],"class_list":["post-87402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary","tag-alan-joiner","tag-calgary","tag-city-of-calgary","tag-fruit-trees","tag-tree-canopy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}