Echten - With the push of a green button, Albert Verlinde (chairman of the National Tree Day Foundation), Inge Nieuwenhuizen (mayor of the municipality of De Wolden) and Sylvo Thijsen (director of Staatsbosbeheer) opened the 67th National Tree Day today at Staatsbosbeheer forestry Ruinen in Echten. During this green holiday, thousands of pupils across the Netherlands stepped out of the classroom and into the residential area or nature to plant trees.

Later that day, Donné Slangen, Director-General of Nature and Fisheries of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food Security and Nature confirmed the importance of nature education for all children. Together with several children, he planted a tree in forestry park Ruinen in municipality De Wolden (Drenthe). In doing so, he and all the other planters became, in the words of columnist Marcel van Ool, advisor on landscape and cultural history at Staatsbosbeheer, ‘part of a miracle’.  

Annual theme

Around the annual theme ‘From tree to forest’, the children learned that trees perform many different functions. In an educational escape game, they discovered that a forest is a collection of trees, but a collection of trees does not make a forest.By stepping into the forest ecosystem, the pupils experienced that in a forest everything is connected and that in a healthy forest biodiversity is high.The higher the biodiversity in a forest, the more resistant it is to diseases and pests and the easier it is to adapt to climate change.   

Tree activities

Stichting Nationale Boomfeestdag aims to enable every child in the Netherlands to plant a tree and gain an understanding of what trees, forests and nature mean to people and the earth. Since 1957, children have discovered during the National Tree Day that they themselves can do something for a healthy, pleasant living environment and a better climate. For many children, a whole new, green world opens up during Tree Day. ‘This was the best day of the year’ and “I didn't know trees were so beautiful” are common cries every year.  

Employees of municipalities, nature organisations such as the Forestry Commission (which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year), environmental education centres, companies and schools get involved by organising a Tree Day to get children in touch with nature. This is done by planting trees, but also by organising excursions with the (city) forester and guest lectures by, for example, an arborist or a landscape architect.  

Heijmans will help plant in the coming years

The new partner of Stichting Nationale Boomfeestdag, construction company Heijmans, planted a tree together with children for the first time today on Boomfeestdag. Like the foundation and its partners, Heijmans wants to enable every child in the Netherlands to discover and experience how important and fun trees are.  

Source: Boomfeestdag.nl