If trees could talk – what would they say? Join us on Texas Arbor Day to learn all the ways trees enrich our lives and support our environment.
CELEBRATE TEXAS ARBOR DAY!
Request a forester to give a presentation and tree planting demonstration to your students.
Want free tree seedlings this Texas Arbor Day? Sign up to receive 20 free bur oak seedlings for your celebration.
Is your community recognized as Tree City USA? Request a forester to attend your community’s Texas Arbor Day event.
There’s something remarkably simple that anyone can do to improve their well-being – Spend time near trees. Learn how healthy trees and forests benefit you and your community through Healthy Trees, Healthy Lives.
Learn and share how trees are kind to your community by providing increased cooling and heating efficiency, water filtration, erosion control, wildlife habitat and more! Calculate the benefits of trees around you and create a tree trail to share through selecting, mapping and identifying trees.
Celebrate Texas Arbor Day by finding an Arbor Day event or tree giveaway near you here.
Hosting your own event? Add your Texas Arbor Day celebration here.
Family Activities
Celebrate Texas Arbor Day in your classroom. Find both elementary and secondary classroom resources and activities here.
*Additional resources will continue to be added throughout the fall.
Join Texas A&M Forest Service in setting an example of how we can each make our state a better place to live, work and play. It takes all kinds to take care of Texas.
Texas A&M Forest Service can quantify and model the ecosystem services of trees planted at your local celebration. Ecosystem services are the benefits trees provide directly to people and include services such as carbon capture, reduction of stormwater runoff, air pollution, human health, energy savings and much more.
- Alignment With Your Corporate Mission - Corporations have their own goals that can align with the work to preserve tree canopy in Texas. Trees are tightly linked to both sustainability and livability of urban areas. Companies working to attract or relocate a high proportion of professional talent understand that quality of life can make or break a deal. Additional tree canopy has a direct impact on retail businesses as well. Consumers have been shown to shop longer and spend more in business districts with high tree canopy.
- Spending Time in Nature Helps you Focus - Trying to focus on many activities or even a single thing for long periods of time can mentally drain us, a phenomenon called Directed Attention Fatigue. Studies show that spending time in nature, looking at plants, water, birds and other aspects of nature gives the cognitive portion of our brain a break, allowing us to focus better and renew our ability to be patient.
- Trees Can Create Happier, Heathier, More Productive Members of Your Team - Numerous studies show that both exercising in forests and simply sitting looking at trees reduce blood pressure as well as the stress-related hormones cortisol and adrenaline. Researchers have found that treed and forest interactions significantly decrease levels of anxiety, depression, anger, confusion, and fatigue that directly correlate to happier more productive members of your team.
- Gen Z Market Segmentation Study - According to a 2021 Gen Z Segmentation Study from Ernst & Young LLP, 55% of Gen Z said they are very or extremely interested in environmental issues, up from 40% in 2019, and a telling 81% believe climate change is one of the biggest problems for the United States. This generations are doing more than voicing their opinion too; they are taking action. Most notably for businesses, 57% think it is very or extremely important to buy from brands that protect and preserve the environment.
Donate to the TreeCovery Fund and help communities replace otherwise lost tree canopy from storms and other natural disasters.
Texas A&M Forest Service is the lead agency for all-hazard responses in the state, including suppression of wildfires and the management of disasters such as floods, drought, hurricanes and more. When communities lose their tree canopy to disaster, they are not just losing trees, they are losing the many ecosystem and resiliency services those trees provided. Replacing significant canopy loss is an expensive and cumbersome process that many communities may not have the capacity to accomplish.
Rather than look backward to events of the past, Arbor Day looks forward with promise for a future filled with trees. Arbor Day celebrates planting and nurturing trees, and all the ways trees enrich our lives and stabilize our environment.
While the purpose of Arbor Day lies in the future, it has an interesting history to earn a spot on the calendar. Historians trace Arbor Day’s origins back to the fifth century when Swiss villagers gathered to plant groves of oak trees. Adults turned the event into a festival and children were given treats as a reward for their help planting trees.
Arbor Day first appeared in the United States in 1872. J. Sterling Morton is credited with guiding this country’s first Arbor Day resolution through the Nebraska state legislature that year. Residents of the Great Plains recognized how much trees could do for them, and they enthusiastically embraced Morton’s vision.
President Theodore Roosevelt was a strong supporter of Arbor Day. Early in the 20th century, it was becoming clear that the nation’s forests were being exhausted by cut-out-and-get-out timber harvesting. The science of forest management was emerging, and the government was moving to suppress wildfire and plant trees. President Roosevelt sent a letter to the children of the United States in which he wrote, “A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as hopeless.”
In Texas, Arbor Day first appeared in Temple on February 22, 1889. W. Goodrich Jones led the citizens of Temple in a mass meeting to call for a tree planting campaign along the streets of the city. One year later, the first statewide observance of Arbor Day was held in Austin. Through the efforts of Senator George Tyler of Belton, February 22 was set aside by law as Arbor Day to encourage the planting of trees in the state.
After the original Texas Arbor Day law expired, the state continued to observe Arbor Day by proclamation of the governor, usually on George Washington’s birthday. In 1949, the state legislature adopted a resolution designating the third Friday in January as Texas Arbor Day. In 1989 the legislature passed a resolution moving Texas Arbor Day to the last Friday in April to align with the traditionally observed national Arbor Day. Today, the official Texas Arbor Day is held on the first Friday in November, but thanks to the diversity of this state, Arbor Day can be celebrated in Texas communities anytime throughout the fall and winter planting season.
