Children from PS 276 in Canarsie helped to celebrate Arbor Day at the Queens Botanical Gardens on May 2 along with approximately 1,200 Queens school children by marching in a parade, creating colorful posters about bees and nature, and enjoying information booths set up by Brushy Mountain Bee Farm, Alley Pond Environmental Center, and other exhibitors.
In keeping with Arbor Day’s theme, “Bees and Trees,” Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and NYC Council Members John Liu, Peter Vallone, Jr., and James Gennaro praised bees for pollinating trees and making possible much of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts humans consume. The officials stood near a bright yellow hive with a glass wall that allows visitors to see an active beehive’s interior. In addition, Bill Huisman, Director of the Aviation Development Council, a nonprofit group that manages development issues at metropolitan airports, presented a check for $7,500 to support QBG’s Bee Garden, one of only two in New York City’s public gardens.
The day’s keynote speaker, Stubby Warmbold, of Citilog, Inc., a Pennsylvania company that salvages wood from urban parks, celebrated trees as a renewable resource. Warmbold’s company harvested fallen black locust trees from Long Island parks that were used for the exterior of QBG’s Visitor & Administration Center.
Ten exhibitors with booths lined the Garden’s Oak Allée walkway. Alley Pond’s naturalists, Dr. Aline Euler and her brother Henry Euler, entertained the kids with a box turtle and guinea pig. Shane Gebauer of Brushy Mountain Bee Farm in North Carolina showed how beehives were constructed and let the kids handle real honeycomb. Rangers from the New York State Department of Conservation showed students how tree rings indicate the level of rainfall in past years. Other exhibitors included NYC’s School Tree Planting Program & Million Trees Campaign, the U. S. Department of Agriculture, Long Island Arboricultural Association, The American Museum of Natural History, Queens County Farm, the Queens Museum of Art, and Trees New York.
