Benefits of Trees    

    Improve health

  • Trees improve moods and emotions, and they create feelings of relaxation and well-being.
  • Trees probide privacy and a sense of security.
  • Foliage helps to settle out, trap and hold particulate, pollutants (dust, ash, pollen and smoke) that can damage human lungs.
  • Because of their potential for long life, trees frequently are planted as living memorials. We often become personally attached to trees that we or those we love have planted.
  • In cities, trees can act as buffers, absorbing a significant amount of urban noise.

    Add Natural Character to our cities and towns

  • Provide us with colours, flowers, and beautiful shapes, forms and textures.
  • Trees add interest by changing with the seasons.
  • Trees and associated plants create habitat and food for birds and animals.

    Reduce Pollution

  • Trees absorb carbon dioxide and other dangerous gases and, in turn, replenish the atmosphere with oxygen.
  • An acre of trees produces enough breathing oxygen for 18 people every day.
  • An acre of trees absorbs enough carbon monoxide over a year's time, to equal the amount you produce when you drive your car 26,000 miles.
  • A single mature tree can absorb 48 pounds of carbon dioxide per year, and release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support two human beings.
  • Over 50 years, a tree generates $31,250 worth of oxygen, provides $62,000 worth of air pollution control, recycles $37,500 worth of water, and controls $31,250 worth of soil erosion.
  • City streets lined with trees show a 60 per cent reduction in street-level particulate readings.
  • One 12-inch sugar maple along a roadway removes 60mg of cadmium, 140mg of chromium, 820mg of nickel and 5,200 mg of lead from the environment each growing season.

    Conserve water and prevent soil erosion

  • Trees reduce surface runoff from storm water, and prevent soil erosion and sedimentation of streams.
  • Trees increase ground water recharge to help make up to losses in paved areas.
  • Trees prevented wind from eroding soil.

    Save energy

  • Deciduous trees provide shade and block heat from the sun during hotter months. By dropping their leaves in the fall they admit sunlight in the winter.
  • Shade from trees over hard surfaces such as driveways, patios and sidewalks minimize landscape heat load.
  • Shade trees can reduce air conditioning costs up to 30 per cent.
  • Evergreens planted on the north sides of buildings can intercept and slow winter winds.

    Increase economic stability

  • Trees enhance community economic stability by attracting businesses and tourists.
  • Healthy trees can add up to 20 per cent to residential property values.