Eastern Chapter Society of Ontario Nut Growers, ECSONG

Since 1978, the Eastern Chapter Society of Ontario Nut Growers, ECSONG, has established public demonstration and research nut groves in collaboration with land owners.

ECSONG's 70 members provide advice, assistance and consultation on nut growing for everyone. Several members supply nut tree seedlings. Field days and tours are held at our nut groves on Saturdays in May and September.

ECSONG publishes a quarterly newsletter for members containing local nut news, general nut culture notes, and technical articles on local nut research. We hold workshops on nut growing and make presentations at local fairs. We maintain a library of technical documents and a library of slides, prints and videos. We publish reference works such as a nut cookbook and a nut growers' manual for eastern Ontario. We maintain an inventory of nut trees throughout the region to ensure a broad source of local seeds.

ECSONG promotes nut tree and shrub growing in order to advance the local nut industry and to improve environmental quality, biodiversity, and wildlife habitat. More widespread planting of nut-based parklands, streetscapes, shelter belts, hedge rows, fence rows and landscaping in general, in town and out will benefit us all, as will restoration of damaged and abandoned land to higher productivity.

Our present nut groves are: The Rideau Valley Conservation Authority's 2 hectare Fillmore R. Park Nut Grove at the Baxter Conservation Area, Kars, Ontario: an arboretum of over thirty kinds of nuts and more than a hundred specimens; The National Capital Commission's Dolman Ridge Nut Grove just east of Highway 417 in Ottawa: agroforestry plantations of a dozen kinds of nuts showing both nut and timber production; The South Nation Conservation Authority's 3-hectare Oak Valley Nut Grove west of Winchester Springs, Ontario: a demonstration of interplanting, orcharding and conservation; Canada's Dominion Arboretum collection of nut trees and shrubs at Agriculture Canada's Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa: the largest and oldest regional collection, many of whose specimens were donated by ECSONG members; The shagbark hickory population in Lanark Township, the hardiest of their species in the world; an The Memorial Nut Grove at NRC: six trees so far.

Visit our web site at http://www.ecsong.org/
Contact us at:
ECSONG
14 Kempster Avenue
Ottawa ON K2B 8B2

(613)828-5721

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