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What the heck is Arbor Day? Most Americans probably couldn?EUR??,,????'?????<???EUR?t answer these days?EUR??,,????'?????<??oealthough Landscape Architects know it?EUR??,,????'?????<???EUR?s a day for planting trees.
Tired of Nebraska?EUR??,,????'?????<???EUR?s flat and treeless expanse, newspaper editor J. Sterling Morton invented Arbor Day in the 1870s.
On Jan. 4, 1872, Morton proposed the tree-planting holiday to the State Board of Agriculture. The date was set for April 10 of that year. Prizes were offered to counties and citizens for planting the largest number of trees. More than one million trees were planted in Nebraska on that first Arbor Day.
National Arbor Day is celebrated each year on the last Friday in April. A number of state and local Arbor Days are observed at other times to coincide with the best tree planting weather, from January and February in the south to May in Alaska, Maine and Vermont.
Massachusetts?EUR??,,????'?????<???EUR? state Arbor Day is set for the last week in April to the first week in May, but for the town of Sherborn the day comes early?EUR??,,????'?????<??oeon Nov. 18. (The town is located about 18 miles southwest of Boston.)
Landscape Architect Thomas E. Wirth, ASLA, took advantage of the date to help his community plant four skyline honeylocust trees along Main Street. Wirth said he will plant more on National Arbor Day this April. The town drew up new plans for Main Street in the late 1990s to improve traffic flow. Wirth, as a member of an ad-hoc committee, developed an alternative plan retaining the old road width, and replanting trees close to the road to maintain local scale and character and keep traffic flow at bay.
The trees were tagged by Wirth at Weston Nurseries in nearby Hopkinton, and planted by their landscape division with Tom?EUR??,,????'?????<???EUR?s supervision. Sherborn is Tom?EUR??,,????'?????<???EUR?s hometown, with his services provided pro bono.
Lending a hand on Arbor Day seems a particularly appropriate way for Landscape Architects to do something good and green while raising their community profile?EUR??,,????'?????<??oesomething that?EUR??,,????'?????<???EUR?s never bad for business. Many opportunities are out there.
One is the Nebraska-based Arbor Day Foundation?EUR??,,????'?????<???EUR?s Katrina Tree Recovery Campaign. The effort gives people across the country a chance to help replant trees in coastal Mississippi and Louisiana.
The trees set for planting in Mississippi and Louisiana include bald cypress, eastern red cedar, red maple, and red oak. Native trees and other natural habitats are important assets for the Gulf Coast and are vital to millions of birds that migrate across the Gulf of Mexico and depend on trees, forests and other habitats to provide feeding and resting areas.
To learn more: www.arborday.org/katrina
Francisco Uviña, University of New Mexico
Hardscape Oasis in Litchfield Park
Ash Nochian, Ph.D. Landscape Architect
November 12th, 2025
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