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SIU Celebrates Arbor Day

Today is Arbor Day, a celebration of trees and the role they play in our lives.­

Last week on the SIU campus, volunteers showed up to plant trees along Douglas Drive in observance of Arbor Day.

“We need to make sure these are about twice as wide as the root ball is.

Armed with some shovels, rakes, volunteers and more than a dozen trees, SIU Arborist Jason Tabor instructs his volunteers how to properly plant a tree.

“We’re only going to dig it to the depth of the root ball so it has a firm base.”

“Remove this burlap, cut the top of it off usually leave the sides on just to hold the root ball in place.”

The volunteers are replacing trees along Douglas Drive south of the Arena.

“This is an area on campus that lost most of the trees the last few years due to storms or drought, weather catastrophes so definitely needed some new ones along here.”

A lot of trees were lost during the May 8th storm in 2009.

Superintendent of grounds David Tippy says events like this have helped restore the beauty of campus since 2010.

“Since the storm of 2009 we’ve probably put in the neighborhood of 800 different trees, replanted on campus mainly in the groomed areas but certainly we’ve gone and planted some in the woods and round lake as well.”

According to Tabor rebuilding the beauty the trees bring to campus is important for nature and also helps attract potential students.

“Lots of students, their parents when they come visit this campus one thing they remember a lot of times is the number of trees, the natural beauty of the campus.”

Taylor Stieve is a freshman studying fashion merchandising from Chicago, she says seeing the natural beauty of this campus reminded her of growing up in Italy.

“I was raised around nature and I moved to a big city so coming down here was kind of like going back to my roots a little bit.”

Stieve’s getting her hands dirty planting root balls but that’s what she was looking for in her college experience.

“I didn’t want a big school with big sky scrappers for building, I wanted to be in an area that would allow me to connect with nature and be outside and provide opportunities for me to do more than just sit in a class room and study.”

“It is quite a selling point to people visiting from outside the area having the trees and the grounds being maintained nicely it’s quite an attraction of this campus.”

Tippy says he hopes the volunteers will gain the appreciation for trees that he has gained over the years.

“I’ve planted thousands of trees literally in my lifetime and I don’t think that I ever feel more sense of accomplishment than after I planted a tree here still today, hopefully people that come and join us here today will be able to experience some of that satisfaction maybe when they come back to campus in the future they will drive by or walk by the tree that they helped plant and say you know I planted that tree and it’s a it’s a really cool thing to have an experience in and have a hand in.”

A lot of the trees on Campus have a QR code attached to them called tree trainers

This gives students and the public the ability to learn to identify trees with pictures and information about the trees on campus.

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