Why We Plant Trees
- Team Canopy
- Nov 4
- 10 min read
Updated: Nov 5
We all make choices about how we spend our time. Whether it’s dedicated to work, family, leisure, volunteering, or the hobbies that bring us joy, the hours of our day are finite—and how we choose to use them says a lot about what we value. Some people decide to spend part of their time planting trees. It’s an act that might seem small at first—a few seeds, saplings or nursery trees in the ground—but it’s one that carries long-term meaning, both for the individual and for the community around it.
At Canopy, we are always curious about what motivates people to take part in this sometimes quiet, sometimes collaborative, hands-on stewardship of our planet. We posed the seemingly simple question to a handful of folks in and around Bloomington: Why do you choose to plant trees? The answers we received were anything but simple.
Some spoke of giving back to the planet or creating shade for future generations; others talked about the peace they find in the rhythm of digging and planting, or the sense of belonging that comes from working alongside neighbors toward a shared goal.
Their stories remind us that tree planting is more than a task—it’s a gesture of hope. Each tree represents time well spent, a personal investment in a greener, more resilient future. Thomas Fuller wrote, “Those who plants trees, love others besides themselves.”
Perhaps most inspiring of all, the reasons people give for planting are as diverse and rooted in community as the trees themselves. Their responses may inspire you to do some planting of your own this season.
Ava Hartman (Executive Director, CanopyBloomington): I plant trees because of the residents of Bloomington. I believe that trees are a solution, and I think that everyone deserves free and equitable access to that solution. They serve to shade our streets and homes, clean our air, and beautify our city for a long time. Nothing is better than a planting day where community members come together to do hard work and make our city a cleaner, greener, place to live for each other.
Sarah Mincey (Co-Founder & Co-Chair, CanopyBloomington): I plant trees because there are few things that are more soul satisfying to me. In the moment of planting, I feel the gift that comes to the giver - giving purpose to the tree that can’t plant itself and place-making to the people around it. In the months and early years after, if I’m privileged to pass by, I feel something like the ancient anxiety of a parent - the worry for what processes are at work in and around this being beyond what I can know or control, but the anticipation for the great possibilities. Twenty years or more pass and a tree that I’ve planted humbles me in awe - I was a small part of what has become a canopy that now defines a place on earth.
Mads Gullion (Community Engagement Manager, Office of Sustainability, City of Indianapolis): Have you ever looked at your neighborhood on Google street view and gone back as far as the images go to see how the world has changed? I like to do this and look at the trees. I think about how they've watched kids grow up and families move in and out of houses. They've seen dozens of Halloweens and shaded generations of neighbors. The trees around us change too slowly for us to witness in real time, but with some perspective—some "then" and "now" pictures—we can see them stretch toward the sun.
I plant trees so that one day, I can go back and see the impact I had. Not all the trees I've planted will survive, and it will be a while before I can really see a difference (I planted my first tree in 2022), but in this small way, I've made the world a better place. In a world with such big, scary problems, it can sometimes feel like my work in climate action is hardly a drop in the bucket. But trees are tangible. When I'm done, and my gloves are dirty and my arms are a little sore from digging, there's one more tree (or two or three) to shade the sidewalk, clean the air, and provide all the other wonderful benefits of trees.
Philippa Guthrie (Co-Chair, CanopyBloomington): I plant trees for two reasons. First is to set an example for others. Most people have never planted a tree or even asked someone else to plant one for them. I suspect they do not understand how important trees are to our ultimate survival. Second is because I find trees magical and goodness knows we need more magic in our world. Trees consistently add beauty, entertainment, shade, and community health benefits, all with hardly a fuss. I think of the trees I have planted as my other, incredibly well-behaved children.
Burney Fischer (Professor Emeritus, Indiana University & Advisory Board Member, CanopyBloomington): Humans benefit from the many ecosystem services/benefits of trees. Most enjoy these urban tree/forest benefits as free riders, never planting or caring. I choose to be actively involved.
Haskell Smith (Urban Forester, Bloomington Parks & Recreation): Trees have so many different direct and indirect benefits, and in private tree planting I think the focus is usually on a singular direct benefit, shade, fruit, aesthetic etc. Whereas for us as a city we look at trees as a vital piece of infrastructure that goes towards benefitting the greater common good. We plant trees as a tool to combat some of our bigger threats in climate change, and heat island effects but also those ideas that maybe go unnoticed, like that intrinsic value of a tree lined street that greets you on your way home after work, or the shaded playground near the house that the kids spend every minute they can at. Giving local insects, birds, squirrels and several thousand other species of critters a home, a food source and a means to survive the urban environment. To some a tree is "just" a tree, but to us as a city and a community they are so much more.
Amy Roche (Founding Member, Bloomington Community Orchard & Board Member, CanopyBloomington): I began planting trees, in the founding years of the Bloomington Community Orchard, for fruit—“Free Fruit for All!” to be exact. We planted baby trees that would hopefully grow to someday provide for people we might not even ever meet, which is a heartwarming and hopeful thing to do. You could say we were giving unconditional love to the future. It’s the same feeling for me, planting trees with Canopy. There are so many good reasons—digging in the dirt with new people, learning about nature, moving our bodies outside. These days, I’m very concerned about the heat increasing; I want the merciful, cooling shade that beautiful trees will provide—for everyone. So my favorite reason of the moment is: free shade for all!
Collin Nielsen (Volunteer, CanopyBloomington): I plant trees because I enjoy getting involved in the Bloomington community and making a positive impact. It is also fun to apply what I learned in my environmental science master's program about the ecosystem functions plants can provide, since we get to plant a diverse array of highly productive trees that support food chains.
Ingrid Wiebke (Master Gardener & Volunteer, CanopyBloomington): I plant trees because they provide habitat for wildlife, clean our air and water, connect communities and improve human health and well-being. Spending time outside with like minded people, working physically and making connections is very rewarding. It makes me happy to think of a newly planted tree and how it will impact the future in many ways, like increasing property values, reducing energy costs, creating wildlife habitat and benefiting neighborhoods that need a bigger tree canopy.
Ann Edmonds (Volunteer, CanopyBloomington): Trees do so much for us! They provide us with oxygen, shade, and beauty: spring flowers, lush green leaves in summer, colorful leaves in fall, and the shape of their branches against the sky in winter. (I especially like white sycamore branches against a clear blue sky). But they also provide food and habitat for wildlife, especially birds and insects, but also squirrels and chipmunks. We all know that milkweed is the host plant for monarch butterflies. Did you know that paw paws are the host for zebra swallowtail and spicebush is the host plant for spicebush swallowtail?
Ray Major (Citizen Forester + Volunteer, City of Bloomington Urban Greenspaces): I am a retired forester and tree farmer. I have been planting trees for 60 years.
In retirement I teach people how to grow trees by direct seeding. This is a continuation of my life's work. It is satisfying to help land owners and public land managers learn how to grow and care for trees. Growing trees by direct seeding by has two advantages; 1) It can be done with little or no money; 2) The work of direct seeding is much easier than growing and transplanting nursery stock. It can be done by almost everyone.
Kate Thorbecke (Volunteer, City of Bloomington Urban Greenspaces & CanopyBloomington): The earth's well being, which includes all life, is totally dependent on trees. A loss of native trees is a loss of thousands of plants and animals that depend on them. Joyful time spent planting trees is time well spent.
Robert Harman (Volunteer, City of Bloomington Urban Greenspaces + CanopyBloomington): Trees grow old and die. Some trees are cut down for a variety of reasons. Trees need to be replaced for the shade and oxygen they give us & the life they support. Spending an hour or two planting tree seeds or planting young saplings is the least I can do.
Saige Sentell (Education Director, Sycamore Land Trust): Growing up in southern Indiana, I lived in a cabin surrounded by Chinquapin Oaks, Black Walnuts, Bladdernut, and Leatherwood. At the time, I didn’t know their names or the roles they played in the environment; I just knew they made me feel safe and protected. As an adult, after nearly a decade in conservation and planting more than 40,000 trees across Indiana and Illinois, I’ve come to understand them deeply. I now know how each species depends on limestone soils, how Chinquapin Oaks once sheltered flocks of Passenger Pigeons, and how glaciers shaped the land beneath them. Planting trees and spending time in forests connects us to our natural heritage, and I am grateful to be able to share these special places with people through ecological restoration opportunities and environmental education.
Kate Hammel (Communications Director, Sycamore Land Trust): My family helped to plant a total of twenty native trees at Templeton Elementary School to surround students in beauty and biodiversity, while replacing invasive Callery pear trees that were removed by the school to protect surrounding natural areas. My proud daughters are growing up alongside the trees they helped plant. One day they will marvel at the size of their sheltering canopies and be grateful for the reminder that they have the power to create lasting positive change.
Gillian Field (Urban Greenspace Outreach Coordinator, Bloomington Parks & Recreation): Trees make me think of forests, and forests make me think of blankets that wrap around hills, dales, gullies, sides of mountains, alongside creeks, streams, rivers, and edge up so close to the ocean that they seem to nearly fall off. I think of these verdant green swaths, slices, pockets, and those as vast as the widths of continents, as pulsating beings swarming with life and ice, hot, warm and humid, dry, frigid and frightening. I plant trees and seeds because I want to be close to this life and to be apart from it. I want this life to thrive and survive, with me and without me.
Hugh Farrell (Bloomington's Neighborhood Planting Project): Planting trees is for me a way to contribute to collective well-being—in the practical sense of growing more fruit, of supporting pollinators, and imagining bottom-up solutions to climate change—but also to communal luxury. In her book of the same name, cultural historian Kristin Ross defines communal luxury as "the demand that beauty flourish in spaces shared in common and not just in special privatized preserves [which] means reconfiguring art to be fully integrated into everyday life." Trees contribute to this shared beauty as well as participating themselves in an overflowing community with us and other life forms.
Ross traces the notion of communal luxury through the work of craftsman and author William Morris, whose utopian classic News from Nowhere imagines the destruction of the "imperialist monumentality" of Trafalagar Square's statue of Admiral Nelson, and its replacement with an apricot orchard. "The orchard is the future," Ross says, "but it is one that hearkens back to the chronotope of a society of simple reproduction and the cyclical nature of its processes, whose rhythms come from nature." For me, planting trees is a deceptively simple act, drawing together long communal traditions with aspirations of a shared good life we will have to grow into the future.
Jon Vickers (Community Engagement, CanopyBloomington): There’s a proverb (true origin unknown) that says; “The best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago, the second best time is now.” I believe the best time to plant a tree is now. There are numerous measurable benefits to planting trees. However, in its purest form, tree planting is a selfless act of goodwill—a gift offered to the future, to people you may never meet. Each tree planted is a small legacy, a quiet gesture of hope that can lift your spirit, inspire others, and even create real change. Some of this cannot be measured. That’s why I choose to plant trees—now!
So, if you plant trees, perhaps you can take a few moments to think about what motivates you. If you do not plant trees, come join us! We are confident you will have a great experience and everyone is welcome at CanopyBloomington plantings. If you are still not interested, maybe this posting will encourage you to reconsider why.
CanopyBloomington is a social impact organization created to maximize Bloomington's tree canopy and sustainably manage Bloomington's urban forest for trees' many environmental, health, economic, and social benefits, with a focus on tree equity and community engagement. The staff, board and volunteers work year-round to plant and care for trees, improve air and water quality, and make neighborhoods healthier and more beautiful. But we can’t do it alone.
By donating to CanopyBloomington, you help fund tree-planting initiatives, educational programs, and community engagement efforts that make a lasting impact. Whether you contribute financially, volunteer for a planting event, or participate in our tree adoption programs, your involvement directly supports a greener, more pollinator-friendly Bloomington.