ALL THE TREES

August 12 - December 31, 2018

All the Trees encourages visitors to take a closer look at the trees around the West Point Grey Community Centre and Jericho Park. Thirty trees are tagged with an ID Number, an email address and an invitation to send a personal message to the tree. Artist in residence, Holly Schmidt and a curated group including historian John Atkin, horticulturalist Egan Davis, poet Rahat Kurd, and indigenous herbalist Lori Snyder will be responding to the emails on behalf of the trees. To learn more about the tree respondents, see the biographies listed below the map.

Holly Schmidt was inspired to create this project after reading about a City of Melbourne tree mapping project that invited residents to report tree damage or disease by email. Instead people started sending personal notes to the trees expressing their admiration. This prompted the question What might people write to the trees of Vancouver? 

All the Trees was made possible with the support of the Artist in Communities program through the Vancouver Park Board and West Point Grey Community Centre, the Jericho Stewardship Group, and Queen Mary Elementary School. 

At this stage of the project only 25 trees have been labelled. 5 are being held in reserve so people can nominate favourite trees to be tagged. To nominate a tree, send an email through the contact form on this site. The tree identifications have been done by an enthusiastic artist with a local Tree ID Guide, not a botanist. If you have any corrections, please also send an email. It will be greatly appreciated!

Biographies of Tree Respondents:

John Atkin

John Atkin is a civic historian, writer, heritage consultant and walking tour guide who brings an insight of urban planning and development, a love of architecture, and the fascination of the curious to his work. He is a board member and co-chair of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC and the Dr Sun Yat Sen Chinese Classical Garden. He sits as a member of the City’s Civic Assets Naming Committee. His on-going research project is the origin and creation of the myth of Chinatown Tunnels in North America.

Egan Davis

Egan Davis is a leader in the professional horticulture industry. He is a qualified Red Seal Horticulturalist from Vancouver, BC. Currently, Egan is the chief instructor for the Horticulture Training Program at the University of British Columbia. With past experiences at VanDusen Botanical Garden, Park & Tilford Gardens and the Mendel Floral conservatory in Saskatoon, Egan has a unique background focused on public and botanical gardens. For his entire career, Egan has also run a residential garden consultation, design and build company. He is a highly sought after speaker at garden clubs, professional seminars and on the radio. As a board member of HortEdBC, Egan has contributed to the industry and has a keen interest in promoting the Red Seal certificate in BC.

Rahat Kurd

Rahat Kurd  is a poet and cultural critic in Vancouver. Her first collection of poems is COSMOPHILIA (Talonbooks, 2015). Her poems, essays and reviews have appeared in The New Quarterly, Exile Literary Quarterly, The Walrus, Maisonneuve, Event, Guernica, and Rungh.

Holly Schmidt

Holly Schmidt is a Vancouver artist with a research-based practice that engages processes of collaboration and informal pedagogy. Moving across disciplinary boundaries, she explores the relationships between practices of making, knowledge creation and the formation of temporary communities. Her exhibition, public art and residency projects include Pollen Index (2016) Charles H. Scott Gallery, Till (2014/15) with the Santa Fe Art Institute, Mess Hall (2013) Banff Centre Residency, Moveable Feast (2012) Burnaby Art Gallery, Grow (2011) Other Sights for Artists’ Projects. Upcoming projects are Lost Lessons (2018) Boca del Lupo, Locals Only (2018) AKA Gallery, and Accretion (2018) 10 Different Things with ECUAD Living Labs, City Studio and Vancouver Public Art.

Lori Snyder

Lori Snyder is an indigenous herbalist and educator with a deep knowledge of medicinal and edible plants that grow in the most common and everyday spaces.  Through Lori’s eyes, our immediate surroundings take on a new life and offer a wealth of untapped nutritional resources.  In a time when our connection to the land on which we live grows ever more tenuous, Lori offers us an opportunity to reconnect, leads us to tap into the wisdom of ancestral relations who, for thousands of years, were nourished by this land and cared deeply for its fate.