Fourteen northeast Nebraska Tree City USA (TCUSA) communities met at Pilger on Saturday, April 25th to plant trees.
Pilger has been a Tree City USA community for 15 years. The Nebraska Forest Service and the Arbor Day Foundation co-sponsored the event with the Village of Pilger.
The trees were planted in two settings located along the main entrance street into Pilger and next to the park. Steve Rasmussen, NFS District Forester and organizer of the event said “This was a wonderful showing of support by fellow neighboring TCUSA communities to help replace the trees lost in the 2014 tornado”. Each community brought a tree with some towns bringing more. The community representatives planted their tree(s) in designated locations.
Eighteen trees of 12 different species were planted including three types of oaks, four types of maples, two different lindens, honey locust, ginkgo and Kentucky coffee tree. Planting a diversity of tree types is important to have a healthy and vibrant tree resource that will be best able to handle disease and insect pests.
Communities participating included: Columbus, Creighton, Crofton, Dodge, Hartington, Norfolk, Pender, Pierce, Plainview, Scribner, South Sioux City, Tekamah, Wakefield, and Wayne.