National Tree Day is being celebrated on the 27th of July 2025. It is celebrated in conjunction with School Tree Day.

It’s important to plant trees and to take care of our natural environment because trees absorb and capture carbon from our atmosphere. The timber they produce is also an important, environmentally friendly building material because it stores carbon and is a renewable resource.

HISTORY OF NATIONAL TREE DAY
In 1594, the mayor of the Spanish village of Mondoedo hosted the world’s first documented arbor plantation festival. Later, in 1805, a priest named Don Juan Abern Samtrés lived in the community of Villanueva de la Sierra, who recognized the importance of trees for health, cleanliness, decoration, nature, environment, and customs. He decided to plant trees on Carnival Tuesday to make it more joyful, which is now known as Arbor Day.

The celebration began with a Mass and lasted three days. Following the Mass, Samtrés, accompanied by priests, instructors, and a large crowd of neighbors, planted the first tree — a poplar — in the Valley of the Ejido. There was a feast and dancing later. Samtrés wrote a manifesto in defense of trees, which he distributed to nearby towns to foster love and respect for the environment and encourage them to plant trees in their communities.

In 1872, the first American Arbor Day was celebrated in Nebraska. In 1883, Birdsey Northrop of Connecticut visited Japan and delivered his Arbor Day and Village Improvement message, and in the same year, the American Forestry Association made Northrop the Chairman of the committee to campaign for Arbor Day nationwide. He also shared Arbor Day with Australia, Canada, and Europe.

Arbor Day was first celebrated in Australia on June 20, 1889. Many states in Australia have Arbor Day, although Victoria has an Arbor Week, which was suggested by Premier Rupert Hamer in the 1980s. The country decided to take it a step further by establishing National Tree Day in 1996, and since then, the program has seen communities plant almost 26 million trees. In 2019, the Planet Ark Environmental Foundation created “The Seedling Bank” to provide financial support to schools and community groups where seedlings are needed the most.

NATIONAL TREE DAY ACTIVITIES
Plant a tree
You can host or join a planting through the official National Tree Day website. If that’s too much trouble, simply gather with some friends and family and select a piece of land in which you can do this on your own.

Donate to the Seedling Bank
To get the seeds and organize the event, donations are as important as having volunteers. Go through the National Tree Day website to learn more and donate.

Clean the environment
It’s not just about planting trees. National Tree Day is also about looking after nature, and you can do this by volunteering through the website, if not, you can take care of this on your own by simply cleaning your local park or green space and putting everything in a recycling bin. TreeTreeT