Tree-Planting Charities and Organizations in Canada, Compared (2026)
Updated:
Key takeaways
- There’s no single best tree-planting organization in Canada. The right choice depends on whether you want to restore wildfire-damaged forest, green your own community, support a national program or get detailed tracking.
- If you need a charitable tax receipt, choose a registered charity: Forests Canada, ReForest London or Trees for Life.
- Price per tree isn’t a fair comparison on its own, because a seedling on a remote burn site and a tree in a city park pay for different work, and some programs also draw on public funding.
- Before you give, check who plants the trees, where they go and whether survival results are published.
- Funding tree planting doesn’t automatically offset your emissions, since verified carbon credits are a separate product.
Want to help plant trees in Canada but aren’t sure which organization to support? There are several worthwhile options, from national reforestation programs to smaller groups restoring forests and greening the places people live.
The right choice depends on what matters most to you. Some organizations plant at large scale in remote forests, while others focus on urban green space, community involvement or detailed digital reporting.
Cost matters too, but a lower price per tree doesn’t on its own mean a better environmental outcome. We’ve compared five Canadian tree-planting organizations to show where your money goes, who does the planting, and how each organization reports its results.
About this comparison
This guide is published by Blue Green Planet Project, one of the five organizations below. They’re listed alphabetically, and the order isn’t a ranking. We assessed each one against the same criteria, using information from its own website and public records, and linked to those sources so you can check them yourself.
We’ve left out organizations that currently sponsor our work, including Tree Canada, One Tree Planted and the Arbor Day Foundation, to avoid a conflict of interest. Not every organization listed is a registered charity, including Blue Green Planet Project.
How we compared tree-planting organizations
We looked at five factors that help donors understand what they’re supporting:
- Price: what it costs to fund planting, and what that contribution covers.
- Planting locations: whether the organization works across Canada, internationally or in one region.
- Who plants the trees: professional foresters, Indigenous or local communities, volunteers or other partners.
- Monitoring and reporting: whether donors can find planting locations, survival assessments and project results.
- Charitable status: whether the organization is a registered Canadian charity that can issue official donation receipts.
These factors aren’t equally important to everyone. If you want to restore forest damaged by wildfire, your priorities will differ from someone who wants a tree planted in their own neighbourhood.
Canadian tree-planting organizations compared
| Organization | Primary focus | Price | Tax receipt? | Reporting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Green Planet Project | Restoring wildfire-burned forest in Manitoba and Saskatchewan with Indigenous partners | $1 CAD per tree funded | No, not a registered charity | Independent fall survival assessments, planting maps, tree-quality plots, and photos and video from planting |
| Forests Canada | Forest restoration across Canada, from seed collection to maintenance | Donation-based | Yes BN 898572862RR0001 | Annual reports and impact updates |
| ReForest London | Urban forestry in London, Ontario | $25 to sponsor a park tree | Yes BN 845793991RR0001 | Annual reports |
| Trees for Life | Native trees and shrubs in Canadian communities | Donation-based | Yes BN 712287895RR0001 | Project and impact updates on its website |
| veritree | Restoration tracking platform for businesses | Partnership pricing | No, for-profit company | Geotagged planting records, drone and satellite imagery, random-plot survival checks |
You can confirm any charity’s registration, and read its annual financial return, on the Canada Revenue Agency’s list of charities.
Blue Green Planet Project
Best suited for: donors who want to fund wildfire restoration in Canada at a simple per-tree price, with named project partners and independent survival assessments.
Blue Green Planet Project funds and coordinates tree planting on Canadian land that wouldn’t be replanted otherwise. Its projects are led by Indigenous partners. The Devil’s Lake Kistike’win project in central Manitoba was originated by Nekote LP after the 2021 wildfires, and the Bell Fire project in Saskatchewan is led by Shoal Lake Cree Nation.
Devil’s Lake is a multi-year project: 5.9 million trees went in over its first five planting seasons, with 3 million more planned for 2026. The figures below come from the 2025 season, the most recent one with a published independent survival assessment. In May 2025, crews from the Nekote LP member Nations and Summit Reforestation planted 3 million seedlings across 1,250 hectares at Devil’s Lake, mostly jack pine with some black spruce, grown from seed collected nearby.
What does it cost?
Trees can be funded for $1 CAD each. At Devil’s Lake, Natural Resources Canada’s 2 Billion Trees program provided major funding and Blue Green Planet Project covered the operational shortfall, so a $1 contribution goes toward planting alongside that public funding rather than covering the full cost of a tree on its own.
How is the planting checked?
Survival is assessed by a forest technician from Nisokapawino Forest Management Corporation (NFMC). The fall 2025 assessment of the Devil’s Lake planting recorded 99% survival, with under 1% of seedlings found dead. That figure covers the 2025 planting season only, and the full 2025 Survival Assessment is published on the Annual Reports page. On the Bell Fire project, Dunkley Lumber Limited provides forestry work, verification and monitoring surveys. Beyond these assessments, BGPP’s reporting includes maps of the planting areas, plot surveys that grade the quality of the planted trees, professional photos and video from the planting season, and geotagged photos on request.
These assessments are evidence about planting and survival. They aren’t carbon-credit verification.
What should donors know?
Blue Green Planet Project isn’t a registered Canadian charity and can’t issue charitable donation receipts. It doesn’t sell carbon credits either, so funding trees through its programs shouldn’t be presented as offsetting a specific amount of personal or business emissions.
Learn more about how the projects are run on our Indigenous Partnerships page.
Forests Canada
Best suited for: donors who want to support an established national program that covers the whole restoration process, from seed to maintenance.
Forests Canada is a national registered charity that restores and grows forests across Canada. Its work goes beyond planting. It supports seed collection and growing seedlings, the maintenance young trees need, and education programs, working with planting partners, nurseries, seed collectors and forestry specialists.
Forests Canada reports supporting the planting of more than 54 million trees since 2004, including a record of about 4 million trees in 2025.
What does it cost?
Forests Canada takes donations to support its programs and doesn’t publish a single price per tree, which reflects the wider scope of its work. Donors who want a fixed per-tree amount may prefer an organization with a set sponsorship price.
How does it report its work?
Forests Canada publishes annual reports and shares impact updates on its website.
What should donors know?
As a registered charity, Forests Canada can issue official donation receipts for eligible gifts. Learn more at Forests Canada.
ReForest London
Best suited for: donors who want to improve urban forests and green space in London, Ontario, and take part in planting.
ReForest London is a registered charity that plants and cares for trees in London, Ontario, including through its Million Tree Challenge. It plants native trees in parks and naturalization areas, and sponsors can volunteer at plantings.
In its 2025 annual report, ReForest London reported planting 2,456 trees and 762 shrubs, giving away 2,696 trees, growing 15,835 trees in its nursery, and involving 2,389 volunteers. Its Park Naturalizations program planted 3,099 native trees and shrubs in 20 London parks and green spaces.
What does it cost?
A $25 sponsorship plants a tree in one of ReForest London’s park naturalization plantings and comes with a charitable tax receipt. It also accepts general donations and corporate sponsorships.
How does it report its work?
ReForest London publishes annual reports. Its 2025 annual report breaks down planting, nursery and volunteer numbers by program, along with information about its community planting programs.
What should donors know?
Its focus is local. That suits donors who want to improve London’s urban forest, but it isn’t the right fit if your priority is restoring remote or wildfire-damaged forest elsewhere in Canada. As a registered charity, it can issue donation receipts for eligible gifts. Learn more at ReForest London.
Trees for Life
Best suited for: donors who want to support native planting in the places Canadians live, or honour someone with a tribute.
Trees for Life, registered as Canadian Trees for Life, is a national charity that plants “native trees and shrubs where we live, work, and play.” It also runs a Hall of Heroes, where supporters honour people such as first responders, health care workers and loved ones.
In 2022, Natural Resources Canada announced more than $2.4 million in funding for Trees for Life through the 2 Billion Trees program.
What does it cost?
Trees for Life takes donations and doesn’t publish a fixed price per tree, so check the current options on its website.
How does it report its work?
It shares project and impact updates on its website. If you’re interested in a particular project, ask what planting records, follow-up monitoring and survival information are available.
What should donors know?
Its focus on community planting makes it a different kind of contribution from large-scale reforestation in remote areas. As a registered charity, it can issue donation receipts for eligible gifts. Learn more at Trees for Life.
veritree
Best suited for: businesses that want detailed, data-backed records of the restoration they fund.
veritree is a Vancouver-based restoration technology company. It doesn’t plant trees itself. It funds a global network of planting organizations and uses its platform to document their work.
Plantings are geotagged, with photos and video from each planting session. veritree combines ground-level monitoring with drone and satellite imagery, adds satellite monitoring from year five to track long-term growth, and runs survival checks on random plots.
What does it cost?
veritree mainly offers business partnerships, with pricing based on the services chosen rather than a public per-tree amount.
What should donors know?
veritree describes itself as “purpose-driven for profit.” It isn’t a charity and doesn’t issue donation receipts. It also separates verified restoration from carbon credits and says verified restoration doesn’t generate credits on its own. Learn more at veritree.
Price per tree: why the cheapest option isn’t always the best
It’s tempting to divide your donation by the number of trees and pick whichever gives the biggest number.
Planting costs vary with location, species, site preparation, labour, transport, monitoring and long-term care. Planting seedlings across a remote burn site costs very different amounts from planting larger trees in a city park.
Blue Green Planet Project’s $1 contribution and ReForest London’s $25 park-tree sponsorship pay for different kinds of work, and the $1 sits alongside federal funding. The price difference doesn’t show that one organization is more efficient than the other. A donation to Forests Canada may also go toward seed collection, seedlings and maintenance that don’t translate into a simple number of trees.
When you compare cost, look at what the contribution covers, how the work gets done, and whether the organization shows evidence of the results.
Who actually plants the trees?
Most tree-planting organizations work with partners rather than employing everyone involved in planting. Those partners can include forestry contractors, Indigenous communities, municipalities, conservation groups and volunteers.
Blue Green Planet Project funds Indigenous-led restoration. It hires one Indigenous planting crew directly, and the other 80 or so planters are hired through a planting contractor and come from all over the world, many of them young people. ReForest London plants with community volunteers and local partners. Forests Canada works through a network of planting partners, nurseries and forestry specialists, and veritree funds planting organizations and records their work on its platform.
No model is automatically better than another. What matters is whether the organization explains its role, names the people doing the work, and documents the results.
How do tree-planting organizations report their results?
Look past the total number of trees an organization says it has planted, and check whether it publishes planting locations, project partners, species and seedling survival.
For larger charities, annual reports show how programs are run, and the CRA’s list of charities shows each registered charity’s annual financial return. For individual projects, planting records and survival assessments show what happened on the ground.
These are different kinds of evidence. A financial report doesn’t replace a survival assessment, and a geotagged photo taken on planting day doesn’t show whether the tree is alive three years later. For a fuller checklist, read our guide to vetting a tree-planting charity.
Which tree-planting organization should you choose?
If you want to restore wildfire-damaged forest
Blue Green Planet Project funds Indigenous-led restoration on burned land in Manitoba and Saskatchewan for $1 CAD per tree, with published survival assessments. It isn’t a registered charity and doesn’t issue carbon credits.
If you want to improve local green spaces
ReForest London and Trees for Life focus on planting in communities, which suits donors who want to support urban forests or see the results closer to home.
If you want to support the whole restoration process
Forests Canada supports seed collection, seedlings, planting and maintenance at national scale.
If detailed tracking is your priority
veritree offers detailed digital monitoring and reporting, mainly for businesses.
If you need a charitable tax receipt
Choose a registered Canadian charity: Forests Canada, ReForest London or Trees for Life. Blue Green Planet Project and veritree can’t issue official donation receipts.
Frequently asked questions
Which tree-planting charities in Canada issue tax receipts?
Of the five organizations in this comparison, Forests Canada, ReForest London and Trees for Life are registered charities and can issue official donation receipts for eligible gifts. Blue Green Planet Project and veritree can’t.
Is $1 per tree realistic?
It depends on what the dollar is expected to cover. Planting a seedling in a large restoration project costs far less than planting a tree in a city park, and some projects also draw on public funding. At Blue Green Planet Project, $1 goes toward planting alongside federal funding from the 2 Billion Trees program. Ask any organization offering a low per-tree price what the money covers and where the rest of the cost comes from.
How can I check whether an organization is a registered charity?
Search the Canada Revenue Agency’s list of charities by name or business number. Each listing shows whether the charity is registered and links to its annual financial returns.
Does funding tree planting offset my carbon emissions?
Not automatically. Funding trees isn’t the same as buying verified carbon credits, which are issued under a recognized standard and retired in a registry. Our guide to corporate carbon offsetting in Canada explains the difference.
Making your contribution count
There’s no single tree-planting organization that’s right for every donor. A community planting program and a large forest restoration project can both do valuable work, even though their costs, methods and results differ.
Before you give, find out what your money supports, who does the work, and how the organization reports its results. If you want to support Canadian wildfire restoration led by Indigenous partners, Blue Green Planet Project is one option to consider: explore our projects, read our survival reports, and decide whether our approach fits what you’re looking for.
