Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
The Worland Garden Club will again host the Arbor Day ceremony 12:15 p.m. on Monday in the big gym at the Worland Community Center Complex. The public is invited.
Hosting Arbor Day is one of the garden club’s biggest community involvements and enlists the help of local third- and fourth-grade students as well as the city’s Tree Board and the Washakie County Conservation District.
During the program Worland Mayor Dave Duffy will read a proclamation declaring Monday as Arbor Day. In addition he will be presented the “Tree City USA” flag by regional forester Brian Russell. This year marks 30 years of receiving this distinction. It is through the Tree Board this award is made available through an application process.
Third graders will present a short program including a few songs about trees.
As part of the ceremony, the Worland Garden Club will gift Caitlyn Youngquist a spring snow tree. Youngquist is the agriculture-horticulture education specialist with the Washakie County Extension Office and plans to plant the tree in the community garden located at Newell Sargent Park.
The tree was purchased by the garden club with money earned through last December’s Festival of Years. Folks may remember the club won the People’s Choice award with its “fish bowl Santa.” That and the club’s “Pot Planting” party in June at CultureFest are its biggest money-making projects.
The Washakie County Conservation District purchased Manchurian apricot seedlings and each third-grade student will receive a seedling at the end of school day Monday. Members of the garden club spent Thursday morning wrapping each seedling.
The students plant these trees and fourth-grade students draw a picture story about their tree. The garden club judges the art work awarding first, second and third-place. The first-place winners will each receive a bird feeder and second and third place a certificate.
It is always an enjoyable experience for garden members to look over the art work marveling at some of the intricate and detailed pieces and chuckling over some of the more humorous art pieces.
This year’s first-place winners include Brianna Uhrig and Avery Core, South Side; Breidi Nelson, West Side; and Olivia Mosbroker and Claryssa Salazar, East Side. East Side fourth-grader Kinlynn Brown received the President’s award for her excellence.
The art work is currently on display in the foyer of the WCCC. The art will be on display until the end of Arbor Day.
By exposing our youth to nature, the Worland Garden Club hopes as adults it will instill in them the love of planting and nurturing new growth.