There was an ash tree in the front yard of my childhood home. Although there were many trees in our yard, this tree stood alone.
I come from a family with eight kids and we visited The Morton Arboretum frequently as a family. One of my favorite traditions is our Thanksgiving Day walk at the Arboretum.
I actually have two childhood trees. When I was between the ages of 8 and 10 years old, there was a beautiful weeping willow in our backyard.
My story isn't just about one tree but about being among many trees. The day my mother died, I headed straight to The Morton Arboretum to go for a walk in the woods.
Unfortunately this tree no longer exists. Unlike the many stories of great trees, this one is of the lowly, scrubby box elder.
“Mom, mama, mom, mom, can I tell you, mom? Mama?”
In September 1999, my 13-year-old daughter came to me for help after being assigned an eighth-grade science project: “creating an experiment with plants.” Being an avid amateur gardener
Our kids are 42 and 44. One of them planted a seed in a school project and brought it home in a cup when it was several inches high.
Fifteen years ago I made a donation to the Arbor Day Foundation and received a bag of 10 blue spruce "sticks." They sure didn't look like much!
Where I grew up in Clarendon Hills, we had a large blue spruce in the front yard and two in the backyard. The branches hung down to the ground.
Studded with galls and marked by a long, zipper-like scar, the last of seven elm trees presided massively over our front yard, sheltering generations of squirrels and at least one small human who w
I grew up on Main Street in Lisle. My grandpa worked and my grandparents lived in The Morton Arboretum, so trees were a big part of my life!
My parents retired to a smaller home in the Aurora area as they aged, and their home had a cherry tree in the backyard. I would visit them weekly from the north suburbs with my children.
Redbuds always remind me of the beauty of spring, the awakening from the winter and the coming of a vibrant summer.
My husband and I moved into a new home in Grayslake in 1993. The subdivision was new, but it was built on the site of a former horse farm.
All of the homes were the same Queen Anne style on the short 6400 block of North Newland Avenue in Chicago in the 1950s.
Scott Grams, the executive director of the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association, shares the importance of a childhood tree and what it meant to the kids of a suburban tract home community.
