Our Mini Forest Planting Day at Corbett-Hyland Park October 5 was a resounding success. It was a beautiful day and at the end quite a sight to see it all planted. It will be great to watch how Smiths Falls first mini-forest grows over the coming years!

We couldn’t have made it happen without the amazing volunteers who came out with shovels in hand and smiles on their faces excited to help contribute!  Thanks to everyone who helped it come to fruition:

• Dave Thornley was the man behind the whole project who started with an idea to bring a Mini Forest to Smiths Falls and pulled everything together to make it a reality!
• Steve Rauche of Diggin it Nursery worked with REAL to supply the plants and was out the whole day and planted some of the trees too!
• Craig Sinclair was there from the beginning and helped select the plants for the forest and trained the volunteers to make sure everything was done just right.
• The Town of Smiths Falls – especially Stephanie Clark and her group provided the site and coordinated many elements: compost, leaves, mulch in the Spring and sustenance for the volunteers day in the way of a BBQ.
• The REAL Board of Directors and Mini Forest committee worked diligently over the past months making it a reality: Karen Schecter, Peter Au, Donna McKenna, Dave Thornley, Barb Hicks, Joanne Constantine, Ginny Toffanello, Gerry Baker and Dale Horeczy.
• Photographs by Carol Lyng, Rick Millette and Barb Hicks.

Again we couldn’t have done it without all the volunteers who showed up on a weekend to get their hands in the dirt! Thank you, thank you, thank you.