Cherry Marsh (Toronto)

The Cherry Marsh is an artificial wetland planners are considering building adjacent to Toronto's Cherry Street.

Two large parcels of land west, and east of the North end of Cherry Street were repurposed from light industry to residential in the first two decades of the 21st Century, and a 900 metre spur to the Toronto Streetcar Network was extended south adjacent to Cherry Street.

Initially Cherry trees were to line the streetcar tracks, and to grow in the middle of the lines terminal loop. However, the trees did not thrive because of the high water table so near Lake Ontario. When planners started planning to extend the streetcar further south to serve new development on Villiers Island, and the terminal loop would be made redundant, a new landscaping plan was developed, to turn the former loop into an artificial marsh.

The area around Cherry Street was, for many decades, an under-utilized parcel of former industrial land. To the west was the former campus of the Gooderham and Wortz distillery, which was once the largest distillery in the British Empire. That parcel contained a cluster of heritage buildings from the Victorian era, was repurposed in the 2000s as a residential community. In the 2010s the lands eas