Western Illinois University will celebrate Arbor Day 2024 by planting a paperbark maple tree at 1:30 p.m. Friday, April 26 just north of the University Union in the mall area.
WIU Provost Mark Mossman will kick off the event by reading an Arbor Day proclamation. WIU has been named a Tree Campus USA by the Arbor Day Foundation for 11 consecutive years. In addition, WIU will be presented with the Tree Campus USA Flag for its 11-year recognition from the Arbor Day Foundation.
Within Facilities Management, WIU’s landscape maintenance department maintains more than 2,700 trees on the Macomb campus. Each fall and spring, as part of WIU’s volunteer campus beautification program We Care, trees are planted and mulching is completed around existing trees. Also as a part of Arbor Day, Forestry Instructor Paul Blome and WIU Urban Forestry Management students lead tree plantings with elementary schools in western Illinois. This tradition was started in 1993 by WIU Forestry Professor Tom Green. In addition, each spring, two trees are planted on WIU’s Macomb campus to honor WIU employees and students who have passed away.
According to WIU English Professor Emeritus and Historian John Hallwas, the WIU campus was designed by landscape architect Thomas Hawkes of Chicago and; in 1903-1905 noted horticulturalist John Van Ness Standish selected and supervised the planting of approximately 500 trees.
A complete WIU tree inventory can be found at https://gis.wiu.edu/js/wiutrees/.
***Courtesy of Western Illinois University***
