GUELPH – The recipients of the County of Wellington’s Green Legacy program annual Awards of Excellence were recognized at the Nov. 29 county council meeting.
“Each year I get to come and essentially brag about the Green Legacy for a few minutes and celebrate both its accomplishments and the community members that help us out,” said program manager Rob Johnson.
He said that without the effort of volunteers, Green Legacy could not have produced 170,000 trees and distributed them throughout the county in 2018.
“Over 4,000 individuals come to our two nurseries and give us over 20,000 volunteer hours and our program gives us about 30,000 volunteer hours,” explained Johnson. “We’re just the facilitators of the energy of the county.”
The organization recognized Liz Hazlett for her contribution to Green Legacy with the Individual Award of Excellence. Hazlett was a longtime organizer for Mitchell Woods Public School, who was involved in numerous field trips to the nursery and acted as an advocate for the program within the school community. Now retired from teaching, Hazlett contributes as a tree nursery volunteer assisting with Green Legacy nursery production and distribution.
“We always knew her as an eager teacher on nursery visits,” said community outreach coordinator Alison Morrison. “We’re just so grateful for any time she can spend with us.”
Morrison introduced researchers from Reforest London as recipients of the Organization Award of Excellence. Over the course of the last year, Reforest London has studied the Green Legacy program with the goal of starting something similar in their own community.
This initiative has proven enormously beneficial to Green Legacy as well, said Morrison.
“We had these guys in our offices putting us under a microscope … It made us thing really long and hard about what we do,” she stated.
Agricultural excellence
Another important component to the Green Legacy are the willing landowners, ready to take trees and plant them on their properties. The program’s goal of increasing forest cover in the county from 17 to 30 per cent relies on the willingness of private landowners and farmers to re-purpose land for trees and forests.
For that reason, the Green Legacy Award of Excellence for Agriculture was created.
“We thought this was really important,” said Johnson, noting that Green Legacy has worked with “a ton of farmers,” and “they are amazing people.
“They also try and do the best they can to be good stewards of the land.”
The first agriculture award was presented to Jared James of Timberline Farm. Located in Minto, Timberline is a 100% grass-fed beef operation.
The operation is “pastured in a thoughtful and conservative way that emphasizes caring for the land, protecting and restoring the local ecosystem while emphasizing animal welfare and creating a high-end product,” states a Green Legacy press release.
In addition to planting 3,000 trees on the property in the last five years, Timberline Farms includes a variety of practices that support the greening of Wellington County and the Green Legacy’s mandate, such as maintaining 80 of the 149 acres for wildlife habitat conservation.
As chair of trees for Minto, James supports the Green Legacy’s directives by distributing trees among his neighbours and local farming community.
“We thank Jared James, for setting the bar high and reimagining what is possible when it comes to protecting the environment, keeping Wellington County green and producing quality food,” Green Legacy officials state.
