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The year was 1872 and Nebraska’s great plains were bustling with settlers arriving daily. The land was very different than what they were used to and the barren land left them without cover from the wind. The lack of trees also meant they had little shade from the sun or wood for fuel or buildings. The idea was floated that a day would be set aside where people would come together to plant trees to replenish the ground and build up their community. They called it Arbor Day and it is said that a million trees were planted that day in Nebraska. After some time, other states followed suit and soon every state in the country would pick a day in their state to celebrate a special day for trees. Now, 150 years later, we celebrate that day nationally on the last Friday in April. That’s when schools, cities, states and companies of all sizes plant or give away trees that will grow and provide countless benefits for years to come. For us in Florida, Arbor Day is especially important as our development, hurricanes and disease have taken a bite out of our tree canopies.
For me, I heard of Arbor Day as a child in elementary school. One day, not knowing what was happening, we were led out to the field behind the school where a small tree was sitting next to a hole someone had dug in the ground. With the kids gathered in a circle, our teacher explained how trees created oxygen that we needed to breathe, how when trees grew they would provide shade that we could sit under and how some trees provided fruit that we eat. I’ve never forgotten that day as it was the first time I really understood that trees weren’t “just there,” but that they were once a seed or small sapling before they became the tall beings that I loved to climb.
At around the time our class was planting that little oak, a group of committed and caring individuals in Lincoln, Nebraska, was starting the nonprofit, Arbor Day Foundation. Fifty years later, the Arbor Day Foundation has more than a million members worldwide and has helped plant almost 500 million trees in neighborhoods, schools, parks and forests – making it one of the largest tree planting organizations in the world.
This coming Friday, April 29, Miami-Dade County and other philanthropic partners — including the Arbor Day Foundation — will celebrate the culmination of a major tree planting at Amelia Earhart Park by Million Trees Miami-Dade County: 1,299 new trees. With the help of volunteers and County staff, the last 150 trees will be planted.
In Miami-Dade, our county government has a goal of a 30 percent tree canopy and they can’t do it alone. On April 29, Arbor Day, I hope you help by joining their effort, in your own city or just in your own backyard. It doesn’t have to a hundred trees or a million, but just one.
For more information how you can be involved, visit www.arborday.org or https://www.miamidade.gov/global/recreation/milliontrees/home.page
Robert Ruano is the president of Ecostrata Services, a grants and government consulting firm in Coral Gables, and a member of the Board of Trustees for the Arbor Day Foundation
