WIU Commemorates Arbor Day 2025 with Tree Planting
April 22, 2025

A scene from the 2023 Arbor Day planting at Western Illinois University. This year's event will take place Friday, April 25.
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MACOMB, IL - - Western Illinois University will commemorate Arbor Day 2025 by planting a paperbark maple tree at 1:30 p.m. Friday, April 25 behind the Leslie F. Malpass Library in the mall area.
Within Facilities Management, WIU's landscape maintenance department maintains more than 2,700 trees on the Macomb campus. Each fall and spring, as part of WIU's volunteer campus beautification program, We Care, trees are planted and mulching is completed around existing trees. Also, WIU Urban Forestry Management students lead tree plantings with elementary schools in western Illinois. This tradition was started in 1993 by WIU Forestry Professor Tom Green. In addition, each spring, two trees are planted on WIU's Macomb campus to honor WIU employees and students who have passed away.
According to WIU English Professor Emeritus and Historian John Hallwas, the WIU campus was designed by landscape architect Thomas Hawkes of Chicago and in 1903-1905, noted horticulturalist John Van Ness Standish selected and supervised the planting of approximately 500 trees.
A complete WIU tree inventory can be found at gis.wiu.edu/js/wiutrees.
Posted By: Aaron Viner (AP-Viner@wiu.edu)
Office of University Communications & Marketing
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