This is the second year that Don’t Mess with the Don is teaming up with Toronto Nature Stewards and the City of Toronto to remove the copious amounts of Buckthorn in Sunnybrook Park, providing a chance for native trees that support the park’s biodiversity to survive and thrive.

To date, we have removed 7000 Buckthorns from Sunnybrook Park. This fall we are are expanding our impact, taking further steps towards restoring the Don Valley to a thriving native ecosystem.

Project Buckthorn is in partnership with Toronto Nature Stewards and the City of Toronto, with the financial support of the Invasive Species Action Fund.

Why Buckthorn?

Common Buckthorn, also known as European Buckthorn, is one of the most invasive plants in the Don Valley and there are tens of thousands of trees in Sunnybrook Park alone.

The shrub leafs very early in the year blocking sunlight to native trees, causing them to die off. It spreads voraciously thanks to birds eating its berries and buckthorn’s ability to change the nitrogen levels in the soil to create a better habitat for it grow. This creates dense thickets that crowd out native plants leaving a monoculture ecosystem void of life.

We launched Project Buckthorn in fall 2023 for just six weeks of hard work and pulling together. In this short time we removed over 4000 invasive trees and bagged 75 large garbage bags of berries! This is a great start to the project and we couldn’t have done it without the many volunteers who came to help us and of course to our partners Toronto Nature Stewards and City of Toronto Parks and Forestry.