Canada - Planting in a riparian natural environment park

Groasis gets a lot of feedback from projects that have carried out by Waterboxx® plant cocoon buyers. We cannot plant all these places on earth by ourselves, and therefore we have a great Green Musketeer community who plant trees with our technology. One of these projects with the Waterboxx® plant cocoon has been carried out in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. We want to thank Tracey, Sarah and Tricia from the City of Calargy for this.

Canada overall is temperate, but Calgary has an arid climate with cold winters (with temperatures below -20˚C) and short but sometimes hot summers. It is often sunny as well windy, and it can snow every month of the year. The Chinook winds can increase the temperature with 20˚C in the winter within a few hours, and it may last several days. During the summer, there is very little rain and hot dry winds. Plants that have to grow here have to be very tough and adaptable.

Planting a tree and shrub combined in the Waterboxx® plant cocoon 

For this project, 87 Waterboxx® plant cocoons were used. In each box, a balsam poplar seedling was planted in combination with an associated shrub (Salix bebbiana, Amelanchier, Alnifolia, Rosa woodsia or the Ribes oxycanthoides). The trees and shrubs were planted in September 2016. On the pictures below, you can see the plants after 9 months. 4 of these months were during the winter. 

Challenges during the plantation

One of the challenges was water. Not only in dry, eroded and desert areas can this be a problem. Access for water can be a challenge everywhere. When there was access, it was expensive and hard to give the plants enough water. The Waterboxx® plant cocoon gave the trees and shrubs a good head start during the most critical period of the plant, the first planting years. The only maintenance that has to be done after planting, is to check the trees and shrubs periodically. The Waterboxx® plant cocoons were always full with water and survived, luckily, the winter without damage.

At this moment, the Waterboxx® plant cocoons have a high success rate. One of the ‘problems’ that they had to combat was that when the boxes were placed for a long period or in a sandy/windy climate, the lids got dirty. Due a dirty lid, the Waterboxx® plant cocoon will stop collecting rain and condensation water, as you can see on the image below.

The water in the Waterboxx® plant cocoon atracks all kind of animals. The fences, as you can see on the image below, were placed around the Waterboxx® plant cocoons in order to protect them against beaver and deer herbivory.