Growing trees as a legacy

By Dan Hilborn
Published June 9, 2004


A legacy to one of one of the most ardent supporters of Burnaby Lake is slowly taking shape this summer in the form of new trees and vegetation growing around the pristine nature park.

Members of the Burnaby Lake Park Association joined forces with GVRD Parks staff and almost 100 volunteers to plant more than 1,000 new trees and other plants around the lake over the past two years in a move to stave off the proliferation of what are called 'invasive species.'

The tree planting program was an idea that started almost four decades ago at the behest of one of the driving forces behind the creation of Burnaby Lake Regional Park - former Burnaby school teacher Bob Gardner.

And at a volunteer appreciation barbecue late last month, a park bench was dedicated to the memory of Gardner and his countless hours of trailblazing and tree planting in the 311-hectare nature park.

"It was in the late 1960s when Bob Gardner started to build a series of trails through Burnaby," said Tony Fabian, a close friend of the man who died of cancer two years. "Bob used to bring his students to the lake to study the plants and especially the creatures."

Gardner was a biology instructor at Burnaby Central who loved spending time in the giant outdoor classroom that was Burnaby Lake. "He'd get the kids out there digging in the mud. He wanted all the schools in Burnaby to come out. Sometimes his kids would be out there from the earliest times in the morning until the school day was finished," said Fabian.

And a walk through the forest with Gardner was like an education unto itself, Fabian said. "He saw everything - every step there was another plant or bug or another plant disease that he could describe in detail."

And Gardner was not just dedicated to young people in school. Over a period of many years, he also organized and helped run the court-ordered work program that built the 10-km loop trail around the lake.

"I don't think there was another person like Bob," Fabian said. "He was so calm about things. Often times things wouldn't go right, we'd have a variety of unskilled workers who brought a variety of problems.

"By the time we were finished we had people going on to become accountants, we gave them first aid training, and we showed them how to operate forklifts and chain saws."

Fabian also notes that several of the kids who came through he Burnaby Lake volunteer program run by Gardner also went on to land jobs with the GVRD parks department.

Karin Albert, a community development coordinator for the GVRD and the person responsible for this year's planting program, said the work that Gardner started to preserve Burnaby Lake as a pristine nature reserve is now an ongoing program.

One of the main problems facing the lake today is the changing water table, which is suffocating 80-year-old cottonwood and cedar trees that grew up soon after the Lower Mainland was logged in the early part of the last century.

But more than just regenerating the larger trees, the planting program has another focus - bringing in an assortment of smaller trees that will provide berries, seeds and other food for the many varieties of birds and other animals around the lake, Albert said.

"The idea is to maintain a diversity of species," Albert said. "This is an aging forest, so it has a lot of habitat for different kinds of song birds.

Last fall, volunteers planted cascara, hawthorn, Indian plum, crabapple, and bitter cherry trees for the song birds. This spring, about 500 western red cedar and 800 cottonwoods were planed to replace some of the trees that fell during recent windstorms.

The western red cedars were donated by Fabian and John Thomson, another longtime volunteer around the lake, who also believes in the need to preserve the natural wilderness. The cedar trees are now growing along the south side of the lake, serving as a buffer between the park and Highway No. 1.

Albert said planting new species of trees in the park helps increase the diversity of animal and bird life. Today, more than 200 species of birds reside within the park, either year-round or seasonally.

In addition to the tree planting, GVRD research technician Alison Evely led two different work parties last summer to help remove invasive species that are suffocating out the more beneficial plants around the lake.

Among the plants that were pulled out of the lake were Scotch broom, blackberry, policeman's helmet, purple loosestrife, English ivy, reed canary grass and hops (the plant that gives beer its unique flavour).

Over the two weekends, the work parties filled three separate one- tonne trucks with the weeds and other plants they removed from around the lake.

And Albert credits Bob Gardner for initiating the program of tree- planting and weed-pulling.

"Bob was the founder of the Burnaby Lake Park Association and he wrote the grant proposal that allowed all this to happen," she said. "His legacy has survived. Because of the grant, we were able to start the invasive species program and get a better understanding of what it means to be involved in forest management within an urban setting.

"Yes, he really started something," she said.

The bench dedicated to Bob Gardner can be found near the nature house located near the Piper Spit boardwalk on the north side of Burnaby Lake.