Heritage hedges? Special status could mean life or death for Kanata shrubbery

A bylaw complaint about an unruly hedge is threatening the character of an Ottawa suburb, residents say, and a neighbourhood heritage designation may be their best hope to preserve it.

In early September, a bylaw officer visited Catherine Douglas's home in the Beaverbrook neighbourhood of Kanata North.

The officer informed her the decades-old cedar hedge at the back of her property was encroaching on a narrow, poorly maintained walking path that runs alongside Beaverbrook Road.

Because she'd just paid to have the hedge trimmed in May, Douglas showed the officer a receipt for the work to prove she was caring for the hedge responsibly.

That was the last she heard about the complaint until mid-October when she received an infraction notice in the mail instructing her to cut the hedge back one metre from the path. She said several of her neighbours received the same notice.

According to Douglas, however, such a drastic chop is impossible.

"That would actually kill the hedge," she said.

As a recent decade-long fence dispute shows, prolonged bylaw sagas aren't unheard of in Ottawa. But Douglas's situation adds a new dimension — the possibility that a neighbourhood heritage designation could help end the standoff.

• How an 11-year fence feud ballooned into $43K in tax bills and multiple lawsuits
• The city tore his fence down. Was he treated fairly?

Hedges give neighbourhood character, councillor says

The tall cedar hedges are omnipresent throughout Beaverbrook — so much so that a recent tree inventory published by the local community association opted not to count them because "they are ubiquitous."

Kanata North Coun. Cathy Curry believes the hedges help lend Beaverbrook its unique character.

You feel like you're in the middle of a forest- Coun. Kathy Curry

"Walking on a city street here in Kanata, beside this type of hedge, you feel like you're in the middle of a forest," she said. "When you're actually here and you see it, you can see why this is a special neighbourhood."

Curry said the hedge complaint actually sprung from a regrettable quirk of city bureaucracy. A local resident pushing a baby carriage on the path behind Douglas's home mistook the hedges for city property and contacted the councillor's office to ask if they could be trimmed.

The request was passed on to the city's forestry department before it unexpectedly filtered through to bylaw, Curry said. 

"I think everybody is feeling pretty badly that it got to bylaw," she said. "We just wanted a little trimming, and now we're worried that the hedges might get killed."

City considering heritage designation

For years, Curry said, area residents have been asking for a neighbourhood heritage designation.

The city is currently undertaking feasibility assessments for establishing "heritage conservation districts" (HCDs) in five areas of the city including Beaverbrook.

According to a news release, those assessments will consider each area's "potential for HCD designation, start a dialogue with community members about designation, and determine resources and budgets required for full studies."

Under the Ontario Heritage Act, municipalities are allowed to recognize and protect neighbourhoods that have what the City of Ottawa calls a "cohesive sense of time and place."

Alterations to properties located within HCDs, such as the construction of additions or the partial demolition of a property, would require the approval of the city.

Curry said she hopes such a designation would also protect the Beaverbrook hedges and other natural features in the community. For now, she said the ongoing heritage assessment and separate plans to reconstruct the nearby pathway mean the hedges will be simply trimmed and otherwise left as is.

For Neil Thomson, president of the Kanata Beaverbrook Community Association, a vision of "nature predominance" makes Beaverbrook a worthy candidate for heritage protection.

The neighbourhood was the creation of late Ottawa developer Bill Teron, who was known as the "father of Kanata" and designed Beaverbrook as a satellite city.

"It was unconsciously a 15-minute neighbourhood right out of the box," said Thomson, who has lived there since 1992.

Although construction on the suburb started in the 1960s, Thomson said age alone shouldn't determine whether it deserves heritage status.

"Heritage is not just to preserve something that's from the 1820s. It's also to preserve ideas of architecture and how a city gets built and what might be a model for in the future," he said. "I think that certainly works here in Beaverbrook."

Douglas said she's heard rumblings that the city was pursuing a heritage designation for the neigbourhood and added such an approach would make her happy.

"When you've got such a lovely area in which you grew up, you hope to be able to provide that for your children," she said.