I am traveling this week and have been working insane hours (9am to midnight).  For that reason I haven’t been able to take pictures yet.  I do want to write about an area that I am very passionate about: TREES!

I am in a very urban area.  However, it’s bombarded with trees.  I came to a friend’s house for dinner at Gaithersburg, MD (and right after dinner we both grabbed our laptops and started working).  His neighbourhood street is very much like Savoline Blvd in HVE.  However, it does have a median down the middle and – wait for it – with at least two rows of trees (in some places the middle median has three rows of trees).  On one side of the Savoline-lookalike-street they have one row of trees and on the other side they have two rows, on either side of the sidewalk. 

I was discussing this with him when we were driving and we noticed something else: 1) they put plazas further back from connector roads (like Derry Road), creating a very open feel and 2) even plaza parking lots have trees.  I remembered I was at the Canadian Tire in Milton last weekend and the entire parking lot was just a concrete park.  I wonder if the town should have required x number of trees for every acre of concrete parking lot.  The cost to the builder would be negligible but benefits in terms of beautification and clean air would be great. 

I e-mailed town staff about trees on HVE last week and they told me that the builder met the standard set out by the town.  Well, the standard is very adequate then. 

From my work in Washington, DC I see two rows of trees on either side (with sidewalk between them) and rows of trees in the middle of the road.  The area is old and so trees have gotten a chance to grow really tall.  As a result, I hardly see any roof or road.  Only tree-tops. If you walk off to one end you enter residential areas where the road has green roof (from tall trees to both sides) on top of them. 

That’s what we need in the Escarpment Community we call Milton. When I see the town from high altitude I only want to see tree tops (30 years from now).  Milton should officially adopt a slogan: “Milton, the Escarpment Community”.  I think that will encourage us to adopt a plan that makes it look like an escarpment community. 

Here in Gaithersburg the whole area (and we drove around looking at the area) is full of townhomes.  Some of them are close to a million dollars while others ‘only’ (for this area) cost $300K.  Most detached homes are older. However, what’s common is that despite a very high population density there is not a single building that I could see away from the freeway.  We went to get chicken wings fairly far and I did not pass a single building.  I spent the entire drive in awe of how many trees they planted here.  In fact, I could not find a single place where I could point at and say “they missed this spot”.  THAT is what we need in Milton. 

Thirty years from now if someone hikes up on one of our several parks at the Escarpment and looks down at Milton, they should not see roofs and parking lots and roads, they should see tree tops.  We need to do whatever it takes to do that.  With the type of population density the Town is aiming for in new development, that should be fairly easy to do.

Think about Scott Blvd and Savoline.  Just South of Derry Mattamy alone would have build close to 3,000 homes by the time they are done next year.  That doesn’t include development North of Derry and what other builders will do south of Mattamy’s HVE.  Think about it.  I am asking for perhaps only 100 extra trees on Scott Blvd and Savoline (if that).  These trees do not need much care beyond the initial few seasons.  I do not think the operating cost for these can possibly be so high to be even noticeable since it will be shared by thousands of homes.

Trees do not just provide us with a natural beauty to look at, they also provide fresh air (as we squeeze in more and more people in small areas, cleaner air is more and more needed).  They are known to de-stress people.  But more practically, trees create an illusion of narrower roads and have been known to cut down on speeding.  People who live close to Savoline or Scott routinely witness speeding cars. I believe a raised median with trees on these roads will create an illusion of narrower roads, which will cut down on speeding (regardless of the speed limit, people travel at speeds they feel most comfortable driving at.  Narrower roads make them drive slower.  Illusion of narrower road achieves the same affect without the actual risk narrower roads bring).

So who is with me on getting the town to raise its standards?