For more than four decades, the Nebraska City-based Arbor Day Foundation has planted and
distributed more than 10 million trees annually.
Why? Because trees cool cities, buffer rivers and streams, serve as windbreaks, and help
control erosion and pollution. And they provide nesting sites for our feathered friends.
This non-profit conservation and education organization has one mission: To inspire people
to plant, nurture and celebrate trees. It grew out of the 19th century work of J. Sterling
Morton. A visionary and conservationist, Morton encountered a nearly treeless prairie when he
moved with his bride from Michigan to Nebraska in 1854. Staking a claim in Nebraska City, the
newspaper editor began importing and experimenting with trees. He gave away saplings, many
to pioneers heading west. In 1872, Morton initiated Arbor Day to spread his passion. That year,
Nebraskans planted one million trees.
My own mother did her part. Living in dry West Texas, she was thrilled to discover that a
cottonwood tree had come up in our arid, hard-as-rock back yard. From then on, she faithfully
carried buckets of rinse water from the laundry and carefully poured every drop on the tree. By
the time I was a teenager, that sole tree could be seen from miles away.
The Foundation and its partners, Tree Cities, USA, work to preserve forests across the globe,
restore habitat and forest ecosystems, encourage and maintain urban forests, replace trees in
areas hit by natural disasters, and design playgrounds that connect children with nature.
America’s forests are national treasures. They provide wood for our homes, habitat for wild life,
clean air and drinking water for millions.
Our forests are our future.
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