Students Plant Trees At School For Arbor Day
CHICAGO (CBS) -- For Arbor Day, the city of Chicago has embarked on a tree-planting frenzy.
WBBM Newsradio's Mike Krauser reports, at Friedrich Ludwig Jahn Elementary School on the North Side, students were helping plant 31 trees on school grounds.
"We've been trying to espouse the idea that trees need love, trees need care, in addition to water, to sunlight, to beautiful soil. We've also been teaching them how trees conduct water and nutrients up from the ground," said Chicago Department of Transportation senior city forester Jeff Brinks.
Kids Plant Trees For Arbor Day
He said officials have been teaching the kids about native and non-native species of trees, "and just to have a general sense of community with the trees, and that not only are the trees at school important, but also the trees in their neighborhood, and that nature's not 25 or 100 miles away, but that nature's right out your front or back door."
Brinks will help oversee the planting of 3,800 trees in Chicago this year.
"I'm so happy that my department and myself can give back to the future," he said. "I think that J. Sterling Morton, who was the founder of Arbor Day, said that Arbor Day is like no other holiday. 'Other holidays repose upon the past; while Arbor Day proposes for the future.' And these children are our future."
Brinks is passionate about trees.
"Tree planting is what I love to do. It's a passion. You know what they say, if you have a passion, you never work a day in your life," he said.
