Bear Hill Farm, viewed from above in 2025, is a pilot project in partnership with the Capital Regional District to develop and maintain an agriculture focus activating under utilized lands for food production. (CRD report) Read more at: https://vicnews.com/2026/02/03/saanichs-bear-hill-gets-ready-for-5-year-crd-farm-pilot-program/
A regional park is almost ready to raise farmers on a recently revamped tree nursery in Saanich. A plot in Bear Hill Regional Park serves as a pilot project for the Capital Regional District, under its new Foodlands Access Service established in February 2025. Fallow nearly a decade, with only a small portion used as by the Garry Oak Meadow Preservation Society as a seedling nursery, and previously used as a City of Victoria nursery, CRD staff are now seeking final board approval to use the land for a five-year farm pilot.
Dubbed a farmer-incubator site, the district already allocated a partnership of Haliburton Community Organic Farm Society and LifeCycles Project Society to operate the site, the regional parks committee heard during its Jan. 28 meeting.
Haliburton has two decades of experience in farm incubation and agricultural land management, with a focus on supporting certified organic and regenerative farming practices. LifeCycles is a regional leader in food literacy and security.
Preliminary preparation started in November, according to an information report shared with the committee. That work included clearing brush, invasive plants, trees and stumps alongside soil sampling and testing. Building a base is anticipated to continue the first half of 2026, with a focus on building out farm infrastructure, remediation and policy development including refinement of the farmer application process, land agreements and tenancy responsibilities. The Farmland Access Service aims to use the existing house, with some investment for safety upgrades, to support farm operations. The plan includes removal of a dilapidated barn on the property. The plan is to have farmers selected and accessing the land at 5920 Patricia Bay Hwy by August.
The dominant species in this area is Garry oak, and casual observations confirm that dozens of other species that co-evolved with this tree species are also present.
People stand atop Mt. Tolmie beside a large Garry oak tree. ADRIAN LAM, TIMES COLONIST
A commentary by a Saanich resident.
Buried on page 135 of Saanich’s Quadra-McKenzie Plan are clues of what is in store for present and future residents of Saanich.
Two words that can better connect our imaginations to this place, quicker than just about any other term in the plan, have been relegated to the Quadra-McKenzie Plan’s glossary: Garry oak.
If you’ve ever navigated the Quadra and McKenzie area, you’ll know you can wander in any direction and encounter truly unique woodlands and individual Garry oak trees blended into the built environment.
The dominant species in this area is Garry oak, and casual observations confirm that dozens of other species that co-evolved with this tree species are also present.
The critically endangered remnants of the kwetlal or Garry oak ecosystem exist in the Quadra and McKenzie area today in large part because of lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ stewardship.
In the 2010s, as pressure to bypass development practices that preserve trees and ecosystems intensified, Saanich residents could count on the consistent public support of Dean Murdock, then councillor, for the Garry oak ecosystem.
When Murdock was challenged in 2015 by residents pointing to flaws in Saanich’s bylaws associated with sensitive ecosystems, he shared, “I’m supportive of the intent [of the Environmental Development Permit Area].”
He provided further comments, noting, “It’s really designed to be a protective tool, so that in the event of a change in land use, redevelopment or rezoning, we’re protecting those areas.”
As Murdock, now the mayor, nears the end of his term, his philosophy on Garry oak ecosystems appears to have inverted.
The flawed maps implemented as the evidence-based instrument for implementing the EDPA bylaw still echo across the province today as a cautionary tale of environmental policy failure.
The scandal that emerged frustratingly exacerbated perceptions that ecosystems and urban development are oppositional forces. What followed the collapse of the EDPA was five years of technical review panels and multiple environmental consulting contracts.
After it was proposed by Coun. Zac de Vries, council endorsed the 3-30-300 urban forestry principle, which mandates that every citizen sees at least three trees from their home, that there is 30 per cent urban forest canopy in every land-use designation area and every home is no more than 300 metres from a high-quality green space.
In 2022, there was a last-minute tree-planting election campaign promise by Murdock. His comments in the Times Colonist that November committed to planting “100,000 trees by 2032 on public lands, boulevards and private properties.”
Saanich Parks, which has no authority to plant trees on private land and has received no funding to support increased public tree-planting capacity, is on track to achieve this goal 30 years late.
Murdock’s progress on this particular objective is similarly vexing as council’s meddling with its own 3-30-300 commitments.
After receiving widespread praise for its early adoption of the principle, the Urban Forest Strategy will strive to achieve the 30 per cent canopy threshold in 2064, with one caveat: Saanich Core has been removed from the primary growth land use designation area.
Whether 3-30-300 champion de Vries takes issue with this creative canopy-commitment workaround is ultimately moot. Saanich has no pathway to achieving canopy targets if they continue to defer funding and delay implementing the biodiversity and urban forest strategy recommendations.
Saanich is developing a new tree protection bylaw using urban forest canopy analysis that is nearly seven years old. This is a feature of council opting out of Urban Forest Strategy recommendations to update canopy analysis “at least every five years,” and prevents the ability for comparison with the 2019 canopy baseline.
This is important information to inform how current policies around land use development, climate change and the effectiveness of management approaches are working.
Upgraded canopy analysis would improve decision makers’ understanding of how the Quadra-McKenzie Plan is likely to alter existing canopy, and what management and policy interventions are necessary for urban forestry stewardship.
The voting majority of council, choosing to defer strategic plan recommendations, including updating the canopy analysis, and rushing to implement the Quadra McKenzie Plan, is not taking its responsibility as the steward of this critically endangered ecosystem seriously.
Accountability can be restored, but replacing the kwetlal food system/Garry oak ecosystem after it is removed, council and senior staff cannot.
Ryan Senechal with Kate and Jason, MGEM Program, and at the UBC urban forest research hub. Nov 6, 2025.
Garry Oak species classification within urban forest canopy analysis: a collaboration between GOMPS, UBC’s Master of Geomatics For Environmental Management, and Terra Remote Sensing
Project Origins Garry Oak Meadow Preservation Society has set out to develop a new approach to urban forest monitoring using remote sensing technologies. The Greater Victoria Area is situated in some of the highest remaining concentrations of Garry oak trees and Garry oak and associated ecosystems, and the critically endangered Garry oak ecosystem is facing intensifying land use development pressure. Measuring change in historic Garry oak ecosystem presence and the sharp decline of its extent over time was captured in Historical Garry oak ecosystems of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, pre-European contact to the present (Ted Lea, 2006), but at a very large scale that presents challenges to interpret and apply at the local scale to understand Garry oak ecosystem health and extent.
Garry Oak Mapping in the Capital Region Garry oak-specific mapping has not been updated since the production of Ted Lea’s 2006 publication, but urban forest canopy measuring and monitoring has gradually come online thanks to early efforts spearheaded by Habitat Acquisition Trust to measure land cover classification at the regional scale, and later with multiple local governments adopting urban tree canopy analysis within the Capital Regional District. GOMPS identified a gap in urban forest measuring approach and recognized that providing Garry oak-specific analysis would inform better overall urban forest decision making and outcomes.
Fielding Interest and Research In 2023, GOMPS began exploring the body of research on remote sensing approaches to classify individual tree species, and consulted with experts in remote sensing in academic, non-profit, government, and commercial organizations to develop a project scope with the greatest potential for accuracy, repeatability, and ultimately adoption by local government urban forest managers. We learned that while species classification was a capacity that was growing in commercial forestry applications, it remained largely absent from urban forest canopy analysis, and Garry oak species classification had not been conducted in academic or commercial applications. Recognizing the importance of a high-accuracy Garry oak-specific lens to support better urban forest stewardship decision making across the region, there was awareness that GOMPS would be the ideal organization to fundraise, activate, and lead the research and development of this tool.
Study Area The study area selected was City of Victoria and a portion of District of Saanich defined as the urban containment boundary. The area selected was targeted intentionally for several purposes, including the strength of existing urban forest management policies and availability of existing urban forest analysis products, for example, a public tree inventory (City of Victoria), and multiple years of urban forest canopy analysis using LiDAR (City of Victoria, District of Saanich). Both City of Victoria and District of Saanich had the greatest commitment and available resources to conduct ongoing measuring and monitoring of the urban forest, and are facing enormous urban development pressure with Provincial legislation adopted in 2023 (e.g., the Housing Supply Act, Housing Statutes (Residential Development) Amendment Act, etc.). Both communities have urban forests which are situated disproportionately on private property (e.g., 75% of City of Victoria’s and 72% of District of Saanich’s urban forest are on private lands), indicating high exposure of Garry oak loss to private land use development and low capacity for those communities to offset those losses on public property. GOMPS’ narrowed the survey for this initial proof of concept project based on the high cost of imagery/LiDAR acquisition with hopes that this project can be replicated in the near future to incorporate other municipalities in the Capital Regional District and beyond.
Project Launch Shortly after the Board’s approval of the project in late 2024 and GOMPS receiving a generous donation to enable the acquisition of aerial imagery/LiDAR, a remote sensing contractor was selected in late 2024 who satisfied the technical capacity required for the project. Shortly before the flight to acquire the raw imagery and LiDAR of the study area, news of our official connection to UBC’s MGEM program came with two students (Kate McIntyre and Jason Wu) being assigned to the research and development of the species classification tool for their capstone projects. The project technical capacity within GOMPS is provided by its Board President, Ryan Senechal, an urban forest professional and educator based in Saanich. Ryan’s work as Lecturer of Urban Forestry at UBC’s Faculty of Forestry connected him globally to urban forest remote sensing research and case study, and to researchers and experts in environmental geomatics within the Faculty.
Data Acquisition Terra Remote Sensing based in Sidney, BC, contracted two flights at 900 m flight level midday in late June of 2025 near the summer equinox, and this timing was intended to capture Garry oaks in full early summer foliage while minimizing shadows on aerial imagery due to sun angle during flights. Technical specifications of the data acquired include 4 band (RGB, NIR) orthographic imagery at 10 cm resolution, and 2 mhz pulse rate LiDAR at 45 points/m2 point cloud density and a scan angle of 60 degrees (30 degrees per side). The reason we chose to acquire raw data using preferred timing and resolution was to provide ideal data quality to perform software analysis and achieve the highest possible accuracy of the tool that is delivered at completion of the project. Previously flown and acquired datasets are more cost effective but may not be ideally timed or provide the specifications we desired, for example, the near infrared spectrum of aerial imagery, which is likely to play an important role in the accuracy of species classification in the analysis phase.
Data Analysis The project has entered the analysis stage starting with Terra Remote Sensing’s initial data cleaning, pre-classification tree height at minimum 2 m height, and an urban forest canopy analysis incorporating all species. Kate and Jason from UBC’s MGEM program have been busy in their graduate course work developing knowledge and skills with geospatial, LiDAR and multi-spectral analysis and have been participating in occasional workshops with Terra Remote Sensing’s technical team. The development of species classification will be completed in mid-2026 and GOMPS is excited to circulate these datasets through our website and to partner organizations and governments following accuracy assessments at the completion of this project.
Open Source Information This project incorporates community open access as a key priority, including the distribution of our project scope and methods, datasets, key findings, and limitations. We are pleased to support Indigenous governments, organizations and governments, researchers and non-profit organizations with our obtained LiDAR and ortho products by request. For access to dataset requests and other project inquiries, please contact us.
This was a legacy Garry oak tree planting project to commemorate the 1994 Commonwealth Games. Two members of GOMPS -Jean-Anne Whitman, landscape architect and Willie MacGillivray, together with the Ministry of Transportation and Highways, the Provincial Capital Commission, Forestry Canada and a group of community volunteers, participated in this project.
Planting Technique and Seedling Source All of the planting techniques were arrived at through consultation with representatives of GOMPS, Forestry Canada and a project manager, Ms. Carol Jones, Professional Agrologist and Nursery operator in North Saanich at the time. The intent was to use “the planting project to assess the growth and health of Garry oak seedlings and to evaluate the use of seedling protection tubes.”
The site preparation included stripping, burying, and tilling the sod, blanketing the site with landscape cloth, and then covering it with bark mulch to keep weeds back. As such, the site approximates a near-natural, non-irrigated habitat. The Garry oak seedlings were “plugs” grown the year before (1993) by Rob Hagel of the Pacific Forestry Centre. On February 19, 1994, volunteers planted 211 seedlings by inserting them into holes dug through the mulch and cloth with a tablet of Bestgro fertilizer placed into the bottom of each hole. Approximately 80% of the seedlings were shielded with protective tubes.
Photo by Jacklyn Jolicoeur. The remains of an original protective tube can be seen at the base of the tree
Previous Inspections The planting clusters were inspected during March of 1994, April of 1995, and in October 1995. The writers do not have access to the records for these inspections. In the fall of 2005, Dr Michael Meagher (retired forester and honorary member of GOMPS) recorded some key measurements and statistics for the planting clusters in the GOMPS newsletter (June 2006), which form the basis of a comparison of the Garry oak trees in 2005 and 2025 (see table below).
Jacklyn is measuring the DBH – diameter at breast height.Quadra Overpass, September 2025, photo by Ryan Senechal. The Bird of Paradise Pub (visible in previous 1995 and 2005 photos) is now obscured by the Garry oak trees that are now just over 30 years old.
2025 Remeasurement
During September of 2025, two members of GOMPS (Ryan Senechal, President and Jacklyn Jolicoeur, Director visited the plantation site and recorded basic tree inventory statistics for all remaining survivors of the plantation into a mobile application. The tree data collected included the GPS coordinates, DBH (diameter at breast height), tree height, tree condition, leaf condition, and tree comments. Here is a comparison summary of the Garry oak tree data over the years.
Quadra Overpass, September 2025, photo by Ryan Senechal. The Bird of Paradise Pub (visible in previous 1995 and 2005 photos) is now obscured by the Garry oak trees that are now just over 30 years old.
Some key takeaways from the assessment
Garry oaks require some protection and establishment care to minimize plant mortality.
Young tree mortality primarily occurred within the first 10 years of planting.
Canopy growth and ring growth rates are slow but faster than estimated in 2006 article).
Narrow spacing between Garry oak trees has a considerable effect on understory biodiversity. These Garry oaks were planted at approximately 3.5 to 4 metres apart. Optimum spacing would be 10 metres.
Shrubs and herbaceous species were lacking in the understory. Multiple stick nests were present, but the species occupying those nests could not be identified.
The trees were crowded and crowns overlapped.
Acorn collection should take the Garry oak tree form into consideration. The majority of trees planted demonstrated similar branch architecture. One defect that consistently appeared was forks with included bark.
Future Opportunities – Short Term
Resurrect a sign at the Quadra Interchange to acknowledge this legacy tree planting project
Remeasurement of the McKenzie interchange that was also planted in 1994.
Introduce stand management to address weak branch unions, improve tree spacing and enhance understory biodiversity.
Future Opportunities – Long Term
Resurrect the vision for the Ministry of Transport (MOT) to improve the local highway landscape with interagency cooperation amongst local governments, GOMPS and others in the volunteer environmental community. This vision would pursue enhancement to the large linear greenway along highways with Garry oak tree/meadow plantings to promote biodiversity, climate adapted natural vegetation and create improved driving experience.
Extend planting areas and incorporate companion species. Improve access from Quadra St and incorporate seating.
Quadra Overpass, September 2025, photos by Jacklyn Jolicoeur. Left Picture: Ryan is recording tree data using the mobile app with a GPS locator (see orange pole on the left-hand side of the Garry oak tree). Right Picture: The young Garry oak trees have an average height of just under 6 metres.
Sources:
Jane Waters, Roadside Development Programs, Ministry of Highways and Transportation, “Ministry describes highway replanting program” Garry Oak Meadow Preservation Society Newsletter, Volume 2, Number 8, Page 4, September 1995.
Pierre d’Estrube, President GOMPS, “The Quadra Overpass Garry Oak Plantation” Garry Oak Meadow Preservation Society Newsletter, Volume 13, Number 1, Page 5, June 2006.
