About
ReForest London is a registered charity with a mission to plant, grow and sustain our urban forest by engaging Londoners. Since our founding in 2005, we have grown to become London’s largest environmental not-for-profit organization, and lead a number of major environmental initiatives for our city, including London’s Million Tree Challenge, one of the first such urban tree planting challenges in Canada.
Our three goals are:
Empowerment: Empower community groups, businesses, and individuals to plant and care for trees.
Ecosystem Health: Improve London’s environmental health through planting trees and shrubs in natural areas, parks, yards and along streets.
Education: Educate Londoners of all ages about the importance of trees and how to plant and care for them.
We are community-driven, and have completed over 450 planting projects with the help of tens of thousands of volunteers. We operate almost exclusively within London, and work to achieve our mission through a variety of programs, including park naturalizations, schoolyard greenings, residential planting programs, seedling growing and giveaways, community outreach and education.
Since our founding by a small group of citizens in 2005, we have grown to become London’s largest environmental not-for-profit organization. We are fortunate to have been recognized for our work by the community through several awards, including recently by the Ontario Parks Association with their 2019 “Protecting Tomorrow Today” award. We are big on partnerships and increasingly looking to help facilitate large-scale, citywide solutions to environmental issues. With the City of London, we co-founded London’s Million Tree Challenge in 2011. In 2015, we worked with Thames Talbot Land Trust to create the London Environment Network. Most recently, in 2019, we officially opened a flagship environmental centre for London and the surrounding region – the Westminster Ponds Centre for Environment and Sustainability.
Our Impact
Over the last sixteen years, we have completed over 450 planting projects, planting over 70,000 native trees and shrubs with the help of thousands of volunteers of all ages. We plant everywhere and with everyone we can: in parks, schoolyards, along trails, in industrial areas, and more.
Since 2011, we’ve been spearheading London’s Million Tree Challenge, which has seen over 475,000 new trees planted by Londoners and London organizations here in the Forest City. We own the Westminster Ponds Centre for Environment & Sustainability, which is home to a number of local environmental organizations and exciting environmental programs. Over the next five years, we aim to make the WPC a thriving hub of environmental action and engagement for our region.
We are extremely active in the community, having delivered or participated in over 370 events in 2019 alone. In addition to our planting programs, we run a number of educational initiatives, and actively work with other groups to help them achieve their own environmental goals.
We and our many dedicated and passionate volunteers are always exploring new ideas and new ways to protect London’s environment. If you’d like to get involved, please visit us at reforestlondon.ca!
