26-04-2025
What is Arbor Day?
CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – Friday is known as a day to plant trees. The Arbor Day Foundation encourages people to plant, nurture, and celebrate trees. The word Arbor comes from Latin and means tree.
Arbor Day was started in Nebraska by J. Sterling Morton, who proposed a tree planting day. And on April 10, 1872, an estimated one million trees were planted across that state.
During the 1870s, other states started observing Arbor Day, and most states observe Arbor Day on the last Friday in April.
Stacey Chickering from Easthampton told 22News, 'I think Arbor Day is important because it gets people out there to get new trees for their yard, it gets people out there to realize that for nature to continue, you need to have things to live in and around.'
Bob Haxby, a volunteer with Tree Northampton, says, 'With global warming, shade will cool the planet. The trees are sun eaters, they eat the sunlight and produce oxygen and sugars, and all life on that planet depends on plant life.'
And here in Northampton, they're celebrating Arbor Day by giving out free trees. 'We're giving away whips, which are shoots and roots of a baby tree, and these are trees we describe on the table with what kinds of needs they have, and we have buckets here with the whips that people can plant at home or wherever they want,' Haxby adds.
Volunteers from Tree Northampton were available to provide information about the trees and plant them as well.
Tree Northampton will be handing out the free whips in front of Northampton City Hall again on Saturday from 8 a.m. until noon.
WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
