We have the immense good fortune of living on the edge of a temperate, old growth rain forest in British Columbia, Canada.

When Europeans settled here in the 1800’s, forestry was the primary industry. The bigger the tree, the higher the profit. In the decades that followed, North Vancouver’s forests were obliterated.

But what most people don’t know is that a few, hard to reach areas were left untouched. In those patches of ancient forest stand some of most majestic trees on the planet.

At Negative Phil, we locate the oldest, largest remaining trees in the valley and preserve their legacies by propagating them from cuttings. In other words - we remove small pieces of foliage (cuttings) from old growth trees and use horticultural techniques to get the cutting to take root and become new trees. When we create a new tree from a cutting, that new tree has the exact same DNA as the host tree from which the cutting was taken. If a cutting was taken from a 1,000 year old tree, the new tree has 1,000 year old DNA.

Every old-growth cutting we collect and cultivate can be traced back to it’s source via the source tree’s GPS coordinates.

One day the old-growth trees will be gone, but they will live on.