How Montreal turned an asphalt sprawl into a biodiversity highway

A forest is growing amid the asphalt of Montreal’s streets. Hundreds of tree saplings are sprouting. Pines, sugar maples, red oaks. Each year, once they mature, the trees host dark-eyed junco that stop over during their migration north. When the fruit on the cherry trees ripen, the berries are picked and donated to the local food bank.

The micro-forest at Mahatma-Gandhi Park is just one stop on the Darlington Ecological Corridor, an interconnected patchwork of parks, gardens and curbside flowers spanning seven kilometres in the city’s Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood — a Montreal first that changes what it means to share an urban metropolis with wildlife.

Ecological corridors typically connect protected and conserved green spaces, preserving biodiversity and allowing wildlife like bears and