The City of Calgary is launching its annual free tree giveaway program next month, and this year twice as many trees are available.

The Branching Out tree program is providing 10,000 trees, up from 5,000 last year, for Calgarians to plant in their yards in an effort to increase the city’s overall tree canopy.

As of 2024, Calgary’s tree canopy coverage was just under 10 per cent, including trees planted on public and private property, according to the program’s website. It hopes to expand the canopy to 16 per cent by 2060.

“In order to do that, we need to plant more trees, and there’s a lot of opportunity to plant trees on the private land,” Alan Joiner, an urban forestry superintendent with Calgary Parks and Open Spaces, told CBC Radio’s The Homestretch on Tuesday.

Calgarians can request up to two trees. They are then responsible for picking them up on an assigned date and planting them. 

Joiner said there is also a mandatory e-learning course that goes over how to care for the tree, and how to safely plant it.

“We want primarily to make sure that people are safe when they plant the tree, make sure we don’t hit anything underground like utilities,” he said. “Also, you know, think 20 years in the future when that tree is nice and tall and wide, are we going to be hitting anything above us?”

Part of the reason the city is doubling the number of trees available, Joiner said, is because last year’s demand “way outstripped” availability. 

This year, the city is offering various types of canopy, conifer and ornamental tree species, ranging from larch to radiant flowering crabapple.  Joiner said there are fewer species available than in past years, in part to keep up with supply chain demands and to ensure there is equal access to the species on offer.

“If there was a type of species where we could only get a couple hundred, we didn’t think it was fair to kind of offer them up and they get spoken for really quickly,” he said.

According to the program’s website, the city is also piloting an extension of the initiative to include trees for commercial/industrial land and condominiums. 

Tree equity over equality

Each quadrant of the city has a specific number of free trees available, Joiner explained. The northwest and southwest are getting 2,000 trees each, and 3,000 trees each for the northeast and southeast quadrants.

Rob Miller, a volunteer with the non-partisan Calgary Climate Hub, said the program is a great way to promote growth of the canopy, especially because about 70 per cent of the land available for tree planting in the city is privately owned.

But Miller said the program could be improved by focusing on tree equity rather than equality, as it’s distribution plan does not account for areas that require more trees.

“They are starting to address that problem now, but they’ve got a lot of catching up to do because some of the neighbourhoods in the northeast and even in the southeast have less than two per cent tree canopy,” said Miller.

Some neighbourhoods, like Mount Royal or Wildwood, have up to 30 per cent canopy coverage, Miller said.

Still, Miller said the initiative is an “excellent program,” and he hopes the pilot partnering with businesses will become permanent.

Online registration dates for the Branching Out program are as follows:

• Northwest Calgary: April 7.
• Northeast Calgary: April 13.
• Southeast Calgary: April 20.
• Southwest Calgary: April 27.

The city will also offer first-come, first-served tree pickups for trees that have not been claimed by their assigned date.