Saturday, April 19, 9:00 AM to Noon

In honor of National Earth Day, three local businesses – Reliable Insurance, @properties-The Russell Company, and Q106.7 – are sponsoring their 12^th annual Recycle Event in the parking lot behind the Russell Company (2522 Covington Street, West Lafayette). It is organized in a very convenient drive-through arrangement.  

The West Lafayette Tree Friends greatly appreciate the opportunity extended by the sponsors to receive donations during the event.  These donations go directly to PLANT MORE TREES!  If you cannot attend the event, you can make a donation by clicking the button below for all the donation options.

More information can be found on the Facebook Event page.

Meet a WLTF Pruner

I’ve been pruning WL’s street trees since I retired in 2005.  Helen Lillich, Lynn Layden, and Beverly Shaw taught me what and how to prune properly on my first outing on Bexley St.  I answered a request in the newspaper for volunteers to come help, no experience needed. 

Trees, just like people, need regular maintenance.  Branches will grow too low to the ground; hide street signs; obstruct pedestrian paths on sidewalks; grow too low over the street with branches hitting mail trucks, garbage trucks, and school buses. 

 WLTF volunteers help the WL Parks & Recreation crew prune trees on Friday mornings in the spring and fall.  We work from the ground – no ladders, no climbing, just hand tools --  hand pruners, hand saws, pole saws.  Each year WLTF volunteers prune 1,000-2,000 of our 11,000+ street trees, helping them grow properly, and safely. 

You can join in on the fun this spring.  Our pruning sessions begin the Friday after Arbor Day May 2. Contact our Chair Paul Brennan at pbrennan@purdue.edu, or WL Greenspace Administrator Brandon Hall at greenspace@westlafayette.in.gov or 765-775-5510 for details.

As one of volunteer pruners, John McDonald, once said about getting out on a nice spring day helping the city by keeping our street trees healthful and helpful, “It sure beats going to the gym!”

Don Wood, for the West Lafayette Tree Friends

Robin Wall Kimmerer (2024)

Indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s new book, The Serviceberry, Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World is an inspiring invitation to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community based on lessons from the natural world.  Just over a hundred pages, The Serviceberry is beautifully written with detailed line drawings by John Burgoyne.

Kimmerer uses the serviceberry tree to reflect on the generosity of ecosystems in which no resource exists solely for itself. The serviceberry’s flowers bloom, providing a feast for pollinators; the pollinators in turn spread the pollen. Fruits ripen and fall, feeding animals and enriching the soil. Birds disperse seeds ensuring the tree’s survival. Kimmerer sees the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world as an embodiment of a gift economy. An economy based on reciprocity and interconnectedness. She asks “What if the simple act of sharing was understood as a means of sustaining both the individual and the community?” 

Although Kimmerer poses big questions, she says the answers don’t have to be big to start. They could be as simple as sharing a basket of berries. She encourages us to use our own “currency of reciprocity-be it money, time, energy, political action, restoration, acts of care, large and small-all are needed in these urgent times.”  Copies are available at the West Lafayette and Tippecanoe County Libraries. 

Serviceberries are a group of four-season trees that offer white flowers in spring, small red berries in summer, excellent fall color, and gray bark in winter. The fruit is usually eaten very quickly by birds or gathered by the ambitious to make jam.

This small tree is often found in most woodlands across Indiana, typically in the understory and midstory of forests, growing to 15-20 feet tall when mature. This tree does well in landscaping.

Serviceberry trees have many common names. These include Juneberry, for the fruiting time, shadbush, shadblow, and shadwood, for the fish that run and spawn in streams during bloom.  Its other name, Saskatoon, is a native American term for tree of many fruits and flowers.