By Kieran Delamont, Ottawa Metro News, September 26, 2017
The city has put in place new guidelines for planting trees in new suburb developments that sit on top of sensitive marine clay soils. The guidelines will ease slightly restrictions that date back to the 2005 Clay Soils Policy, which mandated that city-planted trees required a setback from the house that was equal to the height of the tree. That policy, however, led to many new subdivisions being built with only four types of small trees: Amur Maple, Serviceberry, Crab Apple, and Japanese Lilac trees. Some streets were even built with no trees at all.
“When we started building some of these new subdivisions after the new guidelines came into effect,” said Rob Pierce of the Greater Ottawa Home Builder’s Association. “We were shocked, as the developers, that we were able to build so few trees. […] Over the past 10 years, we’ve tried a couple times to work on these guidelines, with no success.”
http://www.metronews.ca/news/ottawa/2017/09/26/greening-up-the-burbs-ottawa-hoping-for-more-trees-in-new-developments.html