Canopy’s First Year

Let’s talk numbers: those 57,000 trees were planted on nine sites totaling 789 acres across Illinois and Wisconsin. Lined up end to end, the tree rows would march 56 miles across the landscape. And speaking of numbers, each of those trees had GPS coordinates logged during planting, enabling drone and satellite imagery to be used not just for agronomic insights but also reliable quantification of carbon sequestration.

At Canopy, we don’t just plant trees and walk away, we also provide ongoing management services for everything from mowing to seeding, spading to spraying, pruning to harvesting. We can do it all, and we do in fact do it all on over 250 acres of new and established agroforestry operations near our main hub in Champaign, Illinois. Among those farms are several mature black currant plantings, from which we harvested over 12,000 pounds of berries using our mechanical harvester. Watch this space – we’ll be setting harvest records for years to come!

Our first year in the nursery business was also a success, and prepared the way for significant growth in the future. We produced 11,000 trees and shrubs out of the greenhouse, along with 12,000 softwood cuttings of black currants as we populate our mother plant nursery with the best cultivars for the Midwest. In the bare-root nursery we grew over 30,000 trees and shrubs, including favorites such as chestnut, heartnut, elderberry, and persimmon. Trees are available while supplies last – and supplies will be replenished year after year!