Yet established for 114 years in the Lanaudière region along a busy road, the Pépinière de Berthier is still very little known to the general public, as is its contribution to the regeneration of public forests in Quebec.
The nursery, long called the Provincial Nursery of Berthierville, was founded in 1908 by Gustave Clodomir Piché, the first French-Canadian forest engineer. It is the oldest of the six existing public nurseries in Quebec today.
“We often hear about logging, but we are truly a forest incubator, explained Jasmin Gagnon, director of the Berthier Tree Nursery and Forest Seed Center, showing us around the 155 hectares of the site in Sainte- Geneviève-de-Berthier on Route 138 which runs along the St. Lawrence River. This kind of nursery is not well known enough, it is an aspect that people know less about.
Simon Dessureault / QMI AGENCY
At the Pépinière de Berthier, more than 4.5 million tree seedlings are produced annually. Initially, it produced only to reforest the sandy soils of the Berthierville region, but, at present, it is the only public nursery that produces noble hardwoods (such as black walnut, red oak, bur oak fruits, sugar maple and American ash) for reforestation in Quebec.
And the place, where nearly a hundred people work, also houses the only forest seed center in Quebec.
During our visit, employees were transplanting hybrid poplars – another hardwood species grown in Berthier – in the ground, i.e. 15 cm cuttings harvested at the end of November 2021.
“They will have an average height of 1.80 meters in November 2022, it is a fast-growing tree,” Mr. Gagnon told us.
Hardwoods are graded and packed in the fall for delivery a few months later. “You have to wait until the leaves have fallen [vers l’Halloween] and we have three weeks before it freezes, added Mr. Gagnon. We put them in a cold room all winter and we deliver leafy plants in the spring.”
On the coniferous side, the Pépinière de Berthier produces white, Norway, red, black spruce, white pine and red pine.
Simon Dessureault / QMI AGENCY
Quebec’s breadbasket
At the Berthier Forest Seed Center, we discovered a veritable state-of-the-art laboratory, equipped with equipment from Sweden, a world-renowned country in terms of seeds.
“It’s a seed factory, the attic of Quebec is stored here,” Mr. Gagnon told us.
“You can make thousands of trees with a full bottle like that,” he said, showing a small bottle filled with seeds supplied by specialist orchards.
Simon Dessureault / QMI AGENCY
Distribution as needed
It is the Directorate General for the Production of Forest Seeds and Seedlings (DGPSP) of the Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks that takes care of the follow-up.
“The DGPSP will look at where there has been logging, where there will be needs for reforestation plants,” our host explained to us. The DGPSP manages the distribution of seedlings produced by 18 nurseries, the six public – that of Berthier, as well as those of Saint-Modeste, Sainte-Luce, Normandin, Grandes-Piles and Trécesson – and 12 private.
The distribution is made according to the ecological regions. “For example, the white pine that was taken in Abitibi can be treated here, but it will be reforested in its ecological region because it does not have the same genetics as the white pine in Berthier,” said Mr. Gagnon. .
The softwood seedlings from the Pépinière de Berthier are distributed in the regions of Montreal, Lanaudière, Laurentides, part of Mauricie, Outaouais, Estrie and Montérégie, while the hardwoods it produces are for their part distributed across Quebec.