The Department of Landscape Services and Leadership Initiatives at Sam Houston State University will team up to host their annual Texas Arbor Day event on Nov. 7 from 2-4 p.m.
Texas Arbor Day is a holiday that is usually celebrated on the first Friday of November every year. It is a day that people can get together to plant trees and work towards bettering the environment.
When students get involved in Texas Arbor Day, they have the opportunity to experience planting trees and working on community service projects.
“The big thing that I tell the students when they come out to Arbor Day is that, number one, planting trees is a really good thing not just for us but for the community,” Urban Forester and Arborist at SHSU Evan Anderson said. “Trees help a lot with our climate, protecting our soil, preventing floods, lowering energy costs, all these different things.”
A popular initiative occurring right now that goes hand in hand with Arbor Day is a project called Team Trees that has a goal of raising $20 million in order to plant 20 million trees, according to Anderson.
“A big goal of mine is to communicate my knowledge of trees to the students who might not have had the same access to trees and nature that I have,” Anderson said. “So I try to take the things that I learn, and not everybody’s interested in trees and that’s fine, but I think it’s nice to be able to tell people, to communicate the knowledge that I have and engage them on trees so when they look at a tree they don’t see an obstacle or something that drops acorns in their yard. They see something that’s cleaning their air, that’s cooling their yard. It’s actually part of our green infrastructure on campus.”
SHSU Landscape Services and Leadership Initiatives wants to plant at least 20 trees located near the new Life Sciences Building.
The decision to plant the trees there was made because it is a new building that doesn’t have much canopy coverage due to the lack of trees surrounding it. Trees provide benefit when it comes to keeping electricity costs low in the summer and winter because of the shade and warmth that the trees provide, according to Anderson.
To participate in Texas Arbor Day, you can sign up at https://www.shsu.edu/dept/leadership-initiatives/cls/ArborDay.html.
