As a tree planter, speed can often seem like the sole criterion that makes you good at your job. For the most part, this is true. The more trees you get in the ground, the more money you earn. That is with one exception - quality. The other key factor for being a great planter is consistently planting high-quality trees. We understand that quality goes against your productivity incentives, however, it’s still crucial that every tree you put in the ground meets the requirements of the site. That’s why we wanted to highlight why quality is important, and what to look for when evaluating your quality.

Recently, Leader Silviculture attended the Western Forestry Contractor’s Association Conference & Tradeshow in Victoria. It was a great experience to meet so many friendly faces who are as passionate about the silviculture industry as we are, and to learn from industry experts about how we can create a better forestry sector and protect BC’s forests for generations to come. Many topics were covered across the three days, but a few topics stood out to us as significant focuses over the next few years. Obviously, many of these updates affect people with boots on the ground, which is why we wanted to share what we learned and provide some of our thoughts on their impacts and how we’ll be incorporating what we learned into our company’s practices.

Regardless of whether you’re a first-year who’s looking to make a name for yourself at a rookie mill, or you’re a veteran looking for a company where you can spread your wings, a great first step for tree planters to build a good reputation is to get in your Crew Boss’s good graces. If your crew boss likes you, they’ll say good things to those above them. If they don’t, that news travels just as fast. In an effort to help you make a great impression this year, we’ve outlined some key traits that we love seeing in our tree planters, and hope they will help you start creating a great reputation for yourself in the industry.

Leader Silviculture is committed to being a fair employer that treats everybody with respect, and we are constantly looking for ways to improve our methods and do better as an institution. To show that we’re serious, this article explains how we’ve structured our company to build the best work environment we can for our team, and outlines some of the commitments we are making to our employees in 2024.

Remaining injury-free all summer is crucial to maximizing your wages, and with 2024’s Spring plant around the corner, Leader Silviculture has outlined some tips for remaining healthy all year long. We’ve broken our tips down into things that you can do in the preseason to ensure you go to work in good shape, and ways you can minimize the risk of injury every day during the tree planting season.

With the 2023 season coming to a close, we think it’s important to reflect on our triumphs and our tribulations over the last year to better understand where we can improve our operations next season. This is typically an internal process, however, this year, we thought it would be cool to be transparent with all of you by reviewing our 2023 performance and discussing our goals for the new year.

There have been conversations recently about whether technologies, such as Chat GPT, will replace people’s jobs in the near future. In the last few years, several companies have sprung up to explore the use of drones for planting trees and completing other tasks in the silviculture industry. With more questions coming up in the industry about job security, we wanted to delve into the subject to answer the question: Are drones coming for your planting jobs?

Some of you love that you get winters off and make enough money planting to take the winters off to ski and hang out. For those of you who don’t like the idea of half the year without income, finding an off-season job is a priority. Options are endless, however, some roles are better than others in terms of pay, flexibility, and how well your planting skills transfer over. To help your job hunt, we’ve compiled a list of jobs that we’ve seen many of you go to during the off-season.

Efforts to reduce waste in our processes are being made every year to reduce our climate impact, however, finding solutions that are effective and financially feasible is proving to be a challenge. Still, Leader Silviculture is committed to working towards a more sustainable planting industry and are working with organizations like the WFCA to improve our operations. In this article, we wanted to discuss some of the areas where waste is common, and some of the ideas being tested for its solutions.

Now that brushing season is right around the corner, some of you are probably wondering whether you should plant up north for the summer, or stick around and try your hand at brushing… If this sounds like you, here are a few factors you may not have considered.

A slow cooker, also known as the Crock Pot, is a beloved appliance held in great esteem amongst planters. Nobody likes extra work, especially when you’re exhausted, dirty, and starving. The slow cooker is a no-fuss, set-and-forget solution to meal prep that allows you to cook large quantities of warm, hearty meals that are ready when you get home. This article will provide a few simple and delicious recipes that will help with recovery and will soothe the soul.

Once you’ve set yourself up for success in the preseason and are using the proper technique to reduce strain and optimize efficiency, what more can you do to prevent injury and maximize your performance? This article will act as a guide for how to recover most effectively from a day of planting, and how to set yourself up for success the next day.

Screefing is the process of removing the top layer to expose the mineral soil below. This can be as simple as moving branches or other litter, or removing a top layer of grass or other herbaceous competition. In South Central BC, screefing is crucial to ensure seedling survival. This article will show some of the types of screefing you may encounter, and shows some of our top tips for effective screefing while staying injury free.

A career in planting usually means you’ll be working away from home. Accommodations are usually either in camps or motels. Both setups have their pros and cons, and are good for different people. Leader Silviculture jobs normally use motels, which we love, especially for veteran planters that prefer to be a bit more comfort. This article will outline some of the differences between motels and camps, and provide some tips on how to optimize your motel living experience this season.

Finding the right boot can be a complicated process, especially for the first-time buyer. To make it a bit easier, we built this guide to answer some of the questions you may have when buying your first (or 50th!) pair of tree-planting boots.

The Silviculture industry is a far-reaching industry with many moving parts. In an effort to unveil some of the mysteries of the industry’s inner workings, Leader Silviculture is releasing educational articles on the industry, and going in-depth about some of the processes that take place between when a forest is harvested and is regrown to be harvested again. This article will cover all of the main steps between when a tree is planted in the ground, and when it’s ready for reharvest.

The work that Leader Silviculture does covers everything from planting, brushing, and slashing, to pruning, juvenile spacing, and more. Although we cover a large variety of services in the silviculture industry, there are many things that our company has nothing to do with. To build a deeper understanding of everything that goes into logging and replanting a block, we wanted to break down the entire silviculture industry into its individual parts and showcase the importance of each one of them. Because this article would look more like a novel if we covered everything at once, this article will focus on the main things that take place up to the moment when a new tree is put in the ground by one of Leader Silviculture’s planters.

As the planting season begins to wrap up, brushing season is now in full swing at Leader Silviculture. Brushing is a completely different beast from planting. With all of the differences that are involved between brushing and planting, we thought it would be a good idea to outline some simple tips and tricks that can help you make more money as a brusher in the silviculture industry.

Your first-year planting can be really challenging! To help make sure you put your best foot forward in your rookie season, we’ve interviewed Skylar, one of our first years. She told us how she’s enjoyed her first season, gave us her tips on how to make the most of your first year and become as productive as possible. Enjoy!

Once you’ve mastered planting technique, you may find that your productivity plateaus after a while. Now that you’ve mastered everything to do with getting a tree in the ground, these tips will help you master everything else that will increase your productivity.