If you read the Howard County Com­mis­sion report or, many of the pages on this site, you will have heard from us that we think plant­ing a tree is prob­a­bly the sin­gle great­est thing you could do to help our envi­ron­ment. Trees help us with clean air, clean water, shade trees in our yards help keep our energy use low and they pro­vide us with higher aes­thetic envi­ron­ment and bet­ter qual­ity of life.

This fact led us to cre­ate the 2,010 trees pro­gram. This pro­gram set up to give away native trees to res­i­dents so that they may plant them in their yards. As you are prob­a­bly aware, this pro­gram was wildly suc­cess­ful and we gave away all 2,010 trees in less than 40 hours. Now on May 1, we will be dis­trib­ut­ing those trees.

Obvi­ously, for this pro­gram to be truly suc­cess­ful, we are look­ing to make sure these trees get in the ground quickly and the proper plant­ing and main­te­nance tech­niques are used. If you are the recip­i­ent of a tree please fol­low the plant­ing and main­te­nance direc­tions, located below, pre­cisely. Actu­ally, even if you are not a recip­i­ent of one of the 2,010 trees but you have a tree you are look­ing to plant – fol­low­ing these well crafted instruc­tions (pro­vided to us by the Howard County Exten­sion Ser­vice). The Exten­sion Ser­vice, by the way, is a fan­tas­tic resource for, not just tree plant­ing, but all of your gar­den­ing and home land­scap­ing needs. If you get a chance, check out their Home and Gar­den Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter or call them with any ques­tions on pests found in your yard or garden.

Thanks again for all of you that par­tic­i­pated and enjoy your trees!

Plant­ing Tips for Trees (PDF)