Our family has had its roots in Ottawa and the Westend for 4 generations and we care deeply about the Ottawa area. The City, our parks, paths and waterways help make this one of the best places in the world to live and raise a family. We want to do our part to give back to the region by sharing our knowledge and experience where it can make a difference.
Silent Tree Services routinely contributes volunteer hours to local conservation efforts (Friends of the Stittsville Wetlands), clean-up (Annual Poole Creek Clean Up), and restoration efforts (Kemp Forests and Miyawaki Mini-Forests). A short description of these initiatives is provided below.
Bruce is the Vice President of the Friends of the Stittsville Wetlands (FoSW), a volunteer, community-based, not-for-profit corporation. As a member of the Board, he works closely with a dedicated group of volunteers and partner organizations whose mission is to protect, restore, regenerate, and rewild local wetlands that offer critical environmental services to Stittsville and the Ottawa community. Brad volunteers for the FoSW as a photographer to capture images of key community events and local wildlife.
The Dudley’s have been organizing an annual Poole Creek clean-up for the last 3 years and have removed an estimated 700 pounds of waste from Poole Creek in coordination with the Mississippi Valley Conservation Authority, the Ottawa River Keeper and Councillor Glen Gower’s Office. The 2025 clean-up details will be announced in May of this year.
Brad and Bruce were volunteers in the 2023 salt monitoring program and completed numerous readings from Poole Creek in the Stittsville area. They also conducted a multi-sampling study that demonstrated the further downstream you sample the higher the chloride levels get. Although only a single study it demonstrated that contamination is cumulative, as more roadway salt comes into contact with the creek the chloride levels will continue to climb.
Your Forest Canada and Silent Tree Service is a partner of the Network of Nature which is actively supporting the adoption of Miyawaki Mini-Forests in Canada. In October of 2023 we worked closely with the Royal Canadian Geographic Society to create the first Mini-Forest Summit in Canada. As part of the program we completed a field study of various soil conditions in forests in Arnprior (Gillies Grove – old growth), Stittsville (Poole Creek Area – urban forest and parks), and several Mini-Forests (Toronto and Hamilton). The preliminary analysis completed by Nature Metrics and Vineland demonstrated that Mini-Forests perform very well in key areas of environmental service such as sequestering carbon.
The Kemp forest is a small parcel of woodland adjacent to Sacred Heart High School in Stittsville. The forest has been negatively impacted by development and extreme weather and is in need of restoration support. Silent Tree Service will coordinate an effort to identify appropriate restoration activities and will volunteer tree services to support the restoration effort. Work is slated to begin in 2025 and efforts are being coordinated through Councillor Glen Gower’s Office.
The Osgoode Care Centre (OCC) in South Ottawa will be the first health facility to plant a Miyiwaki Mini-Forest and the first in Canada to incorporate a forest meditation space. Ground preparation will be completed in the Spring of 2025 and the planting in early Fall of 2025. The project will be completed by Your Forest Canada in partnership with Dougan Ecology and the Royal Canadian Geographic Society. When completed OCC’s clients, their families and staff will be able to access the forest and nature on their doorstep. The Mini-Forest was made possible through the support of TD Friends of the Environment, Chris Henderson and Your Forest Canada.
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