April 30, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Save a Tree, Don't Plant One
By WILLIAM ALEXANDER

IN case you missed it, Friday was a holiday — National Arbor Day [April 28th] — although in my opinion, calling a day with no white sales, no extended store hours and no Hallmark card, and which you celebrate by swinging a pickaxe for half a day, a "holiday" is a bit of a stretch. Still, before the weekend is over I will have dutifully planted a shrub in the rocky clay that masquerades as soil on my Hudson Valley property. Or, as my son once put it as he watched me plant a rose bush, "That's not gardening, Dad — that's mining."

Despite my affinity for this quaint tradition, I do wonder if Arbor Day has outlived its relevance, and if 21st-century America wouldn't be better served if the focus shifted from planting a tree to saving one, or a thousand.

Arbor Day originated in Nebraska in 1872, the brainchild of J. Sterling Morton, a journalist who, recently arrived from Michigan, was alarmed at the lack of trees on the plains. (Just think: if he had ignored Horace Greeley and gone east instead of west, we might be observing Woodcutting Day today.)

Some 90 years later, when I was 7, my father observed the spirit if not the letter of Arbor Day in his own fashion, taking me into some woods a few miles from our Roslyn home with a shovel and a roll of burlap. After walking for a while, we came upon a beautiful young dogwood, standing alone in a small clearing.

"This is it," my father proclaimed, as he started to dig. We wrapped the roots in burlap and dragged the tree out of the woods.

"Dad, whose property is this?" I asked repeatedly, but he avoided answering. "We're stealing a tree," I finally concluded.

"We're saving it," he replied, his face tight.

Within a few weeks, bulldozers had transformed what was left of the once glorious Mackay estate — which had boasted a 70-acre farm, formal gardens surrounding a Stanford White house and more than 500 acres of parkland — into first, 19th-century Nebraska, and then, 20th-century suburbia.

This made my father immensely sad, a sadness matched only by the pride he took in tending his little piece of the vanished estate. Our purloined white dogwood, the last living thing remaining from those magnificent grounds, stood in our front yard for many years, surviving even the man who saved it from the bulldozer.

My father's lawless but victimless act was the only way he knew to respond to what he viewed as a crime against nature. Four decades later, even though everyone complains about development, similar "crimes" are still occurring with alarming frequency. Fueled by rising home prices and population growth, bulldozers are threatening farms, orchards and tracts of scenic lands in New Jersey and New York and across the nation.

On this Arbor Day weekend, there are some simple things — more effective than planting a tree — that ordinary citizens can do to observe the spirit of the day. No. 1, stop complaining about the price of milk. It seems that every time the price of a gallon of milk goes up a dime, our elected officials — often the same ones who scream the loudest whenever a farm is turned into a housing development — go before a television camera to demand action (and garner a few votes).

Milk pricing is a complex issue, but the fact is, small dairy farms are vanishing at an alarming rate, and the ones that remain are struggling for survival. If you don't want your local farms to become housing developments, you need to accept the reality that milk prices are going to rise because dairy farmers need to make a living. You can't have it both ways.

For the same reason, buy local produce. This may be a challenge. But insist that your supermarket carry black-dirt onions and Long Island potatoes. In season, buy New Jersey tomatoes and Hudson Valley apples. Or, if one is available, join a local farm cooperative. Your participation in community-supported agriculture will reward you with a supply of farm-fresh, often organic vegetables and greens throughout the summer.

Make a contribution to a land trust. Your tax-deductible dollars will go a long way to saving a piece of land from development.

And finally, when you feel powerless, take a page out of my father's book and respond in the only way you know how. Even if it flaunts the law. But you didn't hear that from me.

William Alexander is the author of "The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden."