ARES students planted trees in Farmington’s Fairhills Park

• Photo: Arbor Day

Farmington parks employee Mitch Faber explained how to plant trees to fifth grade students from Akin Road Elementary School during Friday’s Arbor Day celebration at Fairhills Park.

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Need some help planting trees in your yard? There’s a bunch of fifth graders who can probably tell you how it’s done.

The fifth graders in Jodi Hansen’s class at Akin Road Elementary School learned all about how to plant trees – both big and small – during an annual Arbor Day Celebration, sponsored by the city of Farmington.

For nearly two decades, the city of Farmington has coupled with Farmington’s elementary schools to do the annual Arbor Day tree planting. Every year, one of School District 192’s five elementary schools gets to participate in the event. The city chooses a different park each year, and students help to plant several trees in that park.

Students arrived at the park just before 10 a.m. Friday, April 27. Their first task was to plant small trees in cups to take home. The trees were donated by Dakota Electric Association.

Once they were finished decorating the cups that held their new trees, students moved on to a tutorial with Farmington parks employee Mitch Faber, who explained the tree planting process. While the students didn’t have to set the trees into the holes – city parks staff had already taken care of that part – the kids first filled the holes with soil, then covered them with mulch.

Tags: elementary schools, education, farmington, news, environment