By Dave O'Brien
Record-Courier staff writer
Students in Stanton Middle School's Garden Club came together Thursday with hundreds of other schoolchildren and volunteers across the nation as one of only a few schools and parks throughout the nation chosen to plant "Trees for Success."
Stanton was one of only 14 schools and two parks nationwide to receive trees through the program, sponsored by the Arbor Day Foundation with corporate support from the Home Depot Foundation. The school was selected from among 215 groups that applied to the program based on its need for trees, civic and local support, student involvement, plans for upkeep and location.
Under bright, sunny skies, Garden Club co-advisers Maegan Joseph and Laura Murphey organized approximately 20 members of the club into several teams, each with their own tree.
The middle schoolers also got a boost from a group of urban forestry students from Theodore Roosevelt High School under the direction of teachers Tom Franek and John Lang, as well as Gerald Shanley, the city of Kent's arborist.
Franek and Lang and their students gave helpful and educational tips to the Garden Club students about how to position the trees, how and where to position the soil while filling the holes and how grubs and earthworms the students were finding in the soil can be helpful to the trees.
After helping cut the wire holding the root system together, Franek told a group of girls that the burlap encasing the base of the trees would deteriorate in the soil over time.
Ten 15-gallon trees of the honeylocust, buckeye, Japanese zelkova and cut leaf oak varieties, will eventually be planted. Those not planted Thursday morning by the Garden Club will be finished off by urban forestry students, teachers said.
Stanton Principal Tom Larkin called it a "great day" for the "impressive" event.
"Luckily the weather cooperated with us," he said, presenting a plaque from the Arbor Day and Home Depot foundations to Kent Mayor John Fender, who along with Kent Shade Tree Commission member Debbie Miller -- a plant pathologist at the Davey Tree Expert Co. -- attended on behalf of the city.
"Thank you for being here today and supporting us," Larkin told city officials, after which the Garden Club and urban forestry students posed for pictures, saying "trees!" instead of "cheese!" as cameras clicked.
Fender told the middle schoolers, clad in bright green T-shirts commemorating their participation in the event and holding up a Trees for Success banner and flag, that there are three things they will always remember about their time at Stanton.
"You are going to remember your friends, your teachers and events like this," he said.
Other than Kent, events were planned Thursday in Albuquerque, N.M.; Atlanta; Cheyenne, Wyo.; Dallas; Detroit; Drummond, Wis.; Honolulu; Los Angeles; Memphis; Oswego, Ill.; Philadelphia; Richmond, Va.; Roosevelt, N.Y.; Seattle and Wichita.