Urban Restoration
Monument Tree
Framework
Building Conservation Networks
Building Conservation Networks is a city-scale ecological restoration framework that identifies natural systems as structural spines for building regenerative urban landscapes.
Research Initiative
Monument Tree Atlas
Through our Monument Trees research initiative, we map significant heritage trees as anchor nodes for restoration islands.
Implementation Program
Urban Oasis Forest
Our Oasis Forest program translates our studio research into action, helping landowners restore native habitat and connect private land into larger conservation networks.
A New Approach to Conservation
Art + Urban Design
MONUMENT TREES
A Monument Tree is a native tree species that is monumental in its age, size, ecological impact, and cultural legacy. These are pre-settlement trees—typically 150 years or older—that have withstood centuries of urban change.
Their massive canopies and deep root systems offer critical ecological functions, including significant carbon storage, water absorption, and localized microclimate cooling. Beyond their environmental role, Monument Trees also hold deep social and historical significance, anchoring community memory and marking the living history of the landscape.
White Oak, Colquhoun Park
180+ years
Lesia Mokrycke is an artist and landscape designer. Her current work, Monument Trees, uses art to raise awareness about the urban forest while fostering new and innovative approaches to conservation.
Cities were built by clearing forests, burying streams, and fragmenting habitat. We believe cities can be rebuilt by reconnecting them to nature. Building Conservation Networks is a city-scale ecological restoration framework that identifies natural systems — watersheds, remnant forests, and significant trees — as the structural spines of future urban landscapes. Rather than treating parks and plantings as isolated amenities, we see them as connected ecological infrastructure.
At the heart of this framework is our research initiative, Monument Trees — a living archive of heritage and ecologically significant trees that serve as anchor nodes for restoration.
These trees are biological infrastructure. They hold genetic memory, stabilize soil, support biodiversity, and structure microclimates. Through our work, each significant tree becomes a potential restoration island and strengthens the larger-scale urban restoration network.
From this research emerges Urban Oasis Forest, our urban restoration program. Through it, landowners can restore native habitat around significant trees through quality design, expanding canopy succession and connecting private land into larger conservation systems.
In this model, policy evolves from evidence and design emerges from ecology. Restoration begins at the scale of one tree — and extends to the scale of the city.
We are building conservation networks as a living system — embedded in neighborhoods, supported by research, and sustained by community stewardship. The future city is engineered to work with nature, and is structured by it.
Lesia Mokrycke is an artist and landscape designer. Her current work, Monument Trees, uses art to raise awareness about the urban forest while fostering new and innovative approaches to conservation.
Lesia Mokrycke is an artist and landscape designer. Her current work, Monument Trees, uses art to raise awareness about the urban forest while fostering new and innovative approaches to conservation.
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Restoration & stormwater design
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Native planting plans
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Long-term stewardship plans
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Installation services
BUILDING CONSERVATION NETWORKS
Art, Urban Design & Ecological Restoration
Current
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From Vision to Implementation
Whether you’re stewarding a Monument Tree or looking to restore your landscape, we offer site-specific, quality ecological design rooted in long-term resilience. Through our Oasis Forest program, landowners can rebuild native habitat and contribute to a connected ecological system across the city.
We work with a limited number of clients each year to deliver highly tailored ecological restoration plans. Get in touch below to set up a consultation.
How It Works
Step 1: Identify Anchors
Through our Monument Trees research program, we locate and document heritage and ecologically significant trees across the city. These trees are anchor points for restoration.
Step 2: Create Restoration Islands
Around these significant trees, we design native habitats that restore understory, soil health, and biodiversity.
Step 3: Connect Public & Private Land
Through Oasis Forest, landowners can restore native habitat on their property, contributing to a larger conservation network.
Why This Matters
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Supports pollinators and bird habitat
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Strengthens climate resilience
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Protects tree canopy succession
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Contributes to municipal conservation policy
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Connects private land into public ecological systems
How You Can Participate
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Nominate a significant tree
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Restore habitat on your property
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Commission a restoration design
UN DECADE ON ECOSYSTEM RESTORATION
Global Partnership
Current
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Restoring the World's Ecosystems
Aligned with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, our initiative contributes to global efforts to prevent and reverse ecosystem degradation. As a core partner, Tropos focuses on four key areas: Forests, Urban Areas and Freshwater.
That means that every Monument Tree protected, new tree planted, and local property restored contributes to this global effort to revive ecosystems worldwide.
Monument Tree Database
Natural Systems Research
Oasis Forest: The Forest Garden
Restoration & Stormwater Research
MONUMENT TREE STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL
Monument trees are thriving today because homeowners are acting as stewards of their care. These environmental stewards nurture historic trees so that they are preserved and in doing so benefit their entire neighborhoods. Monument trees absorb excess stormwater, mitigate carbon, and can lower surrounding temperatures by as much as 3°C.
The Monument Tree Stewardship Council is a dedicated group of citizens advocating for the protection and long-term care of these important environmental and cultural legacy trees.
RESOURCES
Click on the links to learn more about our programs
Hamilton City Magazine
TVO
"Beautiful, monumental, and magnificent’: Meet Hamilton’s oldest trees"
Downtown Sparrow
"What Coexisting with Urban Trees Can Teach Us About Our City"
CBC Hamilton
"Meet the woman searching for the oldest trees in Hamilton"
2024 Trees Talking, Hamilton Civic Museums;
Tropos' Feature Exhibition at the Lister Building, sponsored by CCA
2023 Monument Trees, Hamilton Civic Museums;
Tropos' Monument Trees Exhibition
How do trees propagate? In the city, it is easy to forget about the important role seeds play in the forest. Seeds are our quiet companions in the city. We rake them up, drop maple keys and watch them spin and pull them from cracks in the sidewalk when they become a nuisance.
The Learning Guide is co-produced with the Department of Tourism and Culture with the City of Hamilton and Tropos. This educational resource for local teachers will help students learn about the urban forest in Hamilton. As part of the Stewardship program established through our work at Tropos, the Learning Guide introduces the core concepts of our work to kids through a series of creative activities: identifying, collecting, and protecting.
Click on the link below to download a copy for your classroom.
Are you interested in becoming a neighbourhood forest steward? Are you passionate about the trees in your community and want to make a difference?
Give us a shout at the link below:
Author and Artist - Lesia Mokrycke
Sponsor - We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts / Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien
Studio Assistants - Mae Garcia, Alex Li, Sophie Williams
Indigenous Specialist - Paul General, Former Head of Six Nations Eco-Centre
Special Thanks - Cathy Plotz at Hamilton Conservation Authority; Kathy Renwald with CBC Hamilton; the Hamilton Municipal Heritage Committee, City of Hamilton Culture and Heritage Department; Hamilton Culture & Tourism / Hamilton Civic Museums; McMaster University, Dept of History; CFMU; CityLAB; University of Toronto, Dept of Environment; Rebecca Rathbone; Hamilton City Magazine; Downtown AM Rotary Club of Hamilton; Our Forest; Downtown Sparrow; Justin Chandler at TVO; Hamilton Naturalists Club; Education department at RBG; Friends of Auchmar, and each member of the Hamilton community who has contributed a tree to this project.
Online exhibition
& public resource
Hamilton is known as an industrial center and an arts city. It is also an Eco-city.
Urban Forest Lab
TROPOS+ : Urban Forest Lab
Our research fosters new approaches to creative engagement, ecology, and social practice that enhance terrestrial ecosystems
Tropos+ is the studio's award winning research space. Our work explores human connection to the land through the arts. Landscape architects have long investigated links between people, health, and nature, while artists play a key role in connecting us with issues of humanity. As part of our work, we explore approaches to science-based questions about art, design and issues of landscape.
The Urban Forest Lab was established as part of Tropos+ in 2021 as a creative space for generating innovating approaches to conservation in urban areas. As an interdisciplinary initiative, the work we do builds on issues of landscape practice to bridge art, science and policy.
Current work
Building Conservation Networks is a research-driven public art and urban design project led by Tropos' principal, Lesia Mokrycke, that highlights the importance of preserving urban forests and the connections between water, land, and human experience. The project identifies historic, monumental trees as key anchors in the ecological and cultural life of the city. By focusing on historic, monumental trees as ecological and cultural anchors, the project emphasizes how protecting ancient trees and restoring habitat can reduce carbon emissions, enhance public good, and protect the planet.
As part of this work, this large-scale art and urban design project presents a strategy for restoration that re-imagines conservation planning to enhance the urban forest. Monument Trees contain information that give us clues about times past and can nurture stronger and more resilient urban forests. Through mapping the location of pre-settlement trees across the city, our research is laying the groundwork to create ecological infrastructure that can withstand changes in the climate. As cultural symbols, we value elder trees as repositories of memory and a foundation for sense of place.