Lauren and Kaitlin Grierson aren’t your average middle school girls. While you might expect to find the twelve-year-olds cheering on their favorite pop stars or enraptured by the latest smartphone game, you’d be more likely to find these sisters deep in one of Ontario’s forests.

You see, the Grierson twins have a very grown-up goal in mind: Helping Forests Ontario plant three million trees across the province for Ontario’s
Green Leaf Challenge.

In 2015, Kaitlin and Lauren were hiking the TransCanada Trail with family and friends.

“With every hike, we fell more deeply in love with the forests,” explains Lauren “We developed true respect for the trees, and came to agree the best way to ‘give back’ and to help prevent climate change was planting with Forests Ontario.”

The twins have a personal goal of planting 1,000 trees. With the help of family and their grade six graduating class, they’ve already planted over 200 sugar maples, willows, dogwoods, cedars and white pines in Southern Ontario soil.

Still, Lauren and Kaitlin wished to do more; they started the website ‘TreesCO2.com’ to inspire and educate other families. The name was chosen to emphasize the important relationship between trees and our air, and compliments the project motto of “plant a tree, plant a future.”

For their passion and commitment to forest restoration, Forests Ontario has invited Kaitlin and Lauren to serve as Ontario’s Green Leaf Challenge Ambassadors. “It is a great privilege, as Ambassadors, to encourage the planting of three million trees,” said Kaitlin; adding, “Forests Ontario makes it so easy to get out and plant trees.”

Help us reach our goal of three million trees by adding your tree to our counter, participating in a planting event, or donating to plant trees.