Apr 22, 2016

Every Day Should Be … By Tim Hodson

Last Friday marked the 46^th celebration of Earth Day.

More than 1 billion people in 192 countries participated in a myriad of activities designed to protect the environment.

Around the world, men, women and children were planting flowers, trees and shrubs, collecting garbage, cleaning up waterways, getting involved in civic events and providing the environment with a little more TLC than they normally do.

Earth Day’s popularity continues to grow every year and our industry plays an important role in that popularity.

One of the big initiatives of the Earth Day Network (the organizers of Earth Day), is to plant nearly 8 billion trees by 2020 when Earth Day turns 50. That is approximately one tree for every person on the planet.

Hopefully as they are planting all of those new trees, the public will invest in the planet’s future by purchasing new plants too.

For our industry, every day is Earth Day thanks to the wonderful products that are produced. But wouldn’t it be nice if everyone treated every day as Earth Day? Schools are a great place to plant that seed — and why not start with gardening?

On Earth Day, millions of schoolchildren and their teachers take part in education, civic and outdoor programs to teach them about the importance of clean air and water, how to begin a lifelong practice of civic participation and experience the wonders of nature.

Why not make horticulture a regular part of the every day curriculum? While many schools do teach their students about the benefits of growing their own plants and vegetables as well as how to grow them, not all of them do.

The sooner we start growing new gardeners, everyone will benefit — especially Mother Earth.

What did you do for Earth Day this year? Drop me a line at thodson@greatamericanpublish.com and let me know what kind of activities your company or community participated in. Also, I’d love to hear if you and your company are working with any schools to teach children about horticulture.

— Tim