Edith Makra
Community Trees Advocate

Ah, another Arbor Day is behind us! I have always defended Arbor Day as the original environmental holiday. The purity and simplicity of its purpose – planting trees – allows us a sense of accomplishment if we can just get some trees in the ground.

Earth Day, the more visible holiday in recent years, aims awfully high and makes strides to save the earth by recycling electronics, establishing composting-worm colonies, making paper and plugging in compact fluorescent bulbs.

Arbor Day is actually about a month of activity for the Community Trees Program. So, finally, I am pausing a moment after more than a month of whirlwind activity to lean on my shovel and consider our accomplishments. In the past year, the Community Trees Program of The Morton Arboretum doubled its staff and there are now two of us advocating for trees. So to really branch out for trees, I turn my advocacy skills inward to sell my Arboretum colleagues on the rewards of community Arbor Day celebrations. If I can get them to take the bait, they are rarely disappointed.

This year, as in the past, Arboretum staff from most every department pitched in to help promote the Morton family motto “Plant Trees” in communities throughout the region. But this year we received an extra boost from very talented volunteers who joined staff in our crazy ambition to visit 25 Chicago schools during Arbor Week. And, we did it!

In total we visited 40 schools in the city and suburbs and planted a love for trees in 3,940 young minds. We also participated in Arbor Day celebrations in 23 other communities and joined in planting 946 trees and 6,100 seedlings. Those trees take root. Really, they do.

As I was driving to my first event in Aurora, I passed a small oak at the Prisco Community Center that Morty the Oak and I helped plant two years ago with a great tree advocate with the Fox Valley Park District, Bill Donnell, and dozens of pre-schoolers. That tender tree, budding vigorously, made me smile. These trees “take,” but I’m marvel even more at the way ideas have taken root in some very special community leaders.

Bill Donnell has been the Arbor Day champion in Aurora for a few years now. This year he launched a new initiative with scouts and community volunteers to plant 1,500 trees in Aurora parks. Last year, just a week or so before Arbor Day, I received a call from an earth science teacher at Nequa Valley High School wanting to plant trees on campus with his students. Though my Arbor Day dance card was nearly full, good-natured colleague Ed Hedborn agreed to visit the Naperville school and help teach the students about tree-planting. He was impressed with the teacher, Nick Marasco, and his students. This Arbor Day, I received another last-minute request for assistance from a youth mentoring group in Aurora, called Triple Threat, wanting to plant trees at a grade school. High school students were scheduled to help the younger students plant six trees. Turns out those students are taught and inspired by the very same teacher and tree advocate we met last year. Nick also led his students in planting 43 additional trees at Nequa Valley this past year.

The last of my tree advocate progeny to tell you about is in Palos Heights. A few years ago, Joe McGee dropped in on me while visiting the Arboretum for the day. As president of the Navajo Hills Homeowners Association, he wanted me to help assure his neighborhood that trees were flourishing and would for many years. I visited the subdivision and made some suggestions for involving residents in planting more diverse trees. Two years ago they collaborated with the city of Palos Heights to plant 19 ornamental and other native trees along Navajo Creek. This year they launched a new project to “Take a Stake in Navajo” by planting trees, as hinted by the Navajo tree committee that selected and marked candidate planting locations with a wooden stake. They worked very hard to make it easy for their neighbors to say “yes” to new, quality trees. They developed a $25,000 plan for canopy restoration in the community and asked the Palos Heights City Council for assistance. In what I think is a perfect public-private partnership, the city anted up one-third of the cost of the new trees, the homeowners association put in another one third and the residents have been asked to put up the last share. A neighborhood garden center allows resident to easily choose native and hardy trees. The Arbor Day celebration in April kicked off the program to plant 75 new trees in the community.

So many of us can feel a sense of accomplishment about this successful Arbor Day – the Chicago Bureau of Forestry and the Chicago Public Schools, my co-workers and our volunteers, the stellar community tree advocates and the neighbors they touch.

We all can celebrate as passion for trees takes root and grows in communities reaching far and wide. Happy Arbor Day!

Thank you to JEWEL-OSCO, presenting sponsor for Arbor Week 2009. 

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