Tree huggers go out on a limb at Arbor Day Festival
Apr 18, 2023
Nancy Edwards and her grandchildren, 7-year-old Lochlan Kenyon and 5-year-old Ryland Kenyon, browse saplings to take home. Photos by: Wes Cipolla
Sisters Sage and Alison Bernier, both 5, race each other down the hill. 7-year-old Micaela Healy prefers rolling her way down.
Micaela has to take a moment to regain her balance.
Save the environment, he must: Oliver Eisenhauer, 6, makes a “seed bomb” with the help of his mother Ashley and his older sister Raelynn, 13.
Oliver’s sister Aria, also 6, doesn’t like getting her hands dirty. Here she is with Ashley and her older sister Brielle, 11.
Nevertheless, Aria is enjoying herself.
Six-year-old Aria Eisenhauer doesn’t like getting her hands dirty.
“Wash my hands!” She cried after making a “seed bomb,” a clay ball covered in soil and filled with seeds, at the Wareham Garden Club’s Arbor Day Festival on Tuesday, April 18.
Despite her disgust, Aria and her siblings enjoyed making the “bombs,” which are thrown onto the ground in random places (with permission, of course) to inspire plant growth.
“I had fun,” said Aria’s brother Oliver, also 6. “I like getting dirty.”
“I liked it,” said Aria and Oliver’s older sister Brielle, 11. “Except for getting my hands really dirty.”
Brielle plans to put her seed bombs in her yard.
The Festival, held at A.D. Makepeace headquarters on Tihonet Road, was a way to introduce kids to gardening, planting and other acts of service to the environment.
“We wanted to give something back to the community,” said Wareham Garden Club Arbor Day Committee Chair Mary Ziino, “and we want to reach out so children can have the experience of planting and doing fun things outside.”
The Garden Club gave away dozens of native tree saplings. Josh Sylvia, whom Ziino called “a nice young man,” went home with a birch sapling. He took his daughters Nina, 8, and Hadley, 3, to the Festival to teach them about trees and recycling.
Seven-year-old Lochlan Kenyon, and his 5-year-old brother Ryland, attended the Festival with their grandmother, Nancy Edwards. They picked out a white pine sapling and a redbud sapling to bring home to their mother.
The two also made effigies out of the Lorax, the fuzzy-furred tree protector of the classic Dr. Seuss story, out of oranges.
Lochlan said that the festival was “awesome.”
Ryland made his Lorax say “Please don’t eat me!”
Other activities at the Festival included crafts, a scavenger hunt for plants and animals, face painting and presentations about butterflies and recycling.
Sisters Sage and Alison Bernier, both 5, seemed to already have a healthy appreciation for nature, frolicking and rolling around in the grass. Their mother Sarah was happy about their enthusiasm, but warned of ticks.
“I wanted them to learn about planting and taking care of the environment,” Sarah said. “Now we know what to grow to draw the butterflies in.”
