At the Upstate Chapter’s November 2025 monthly meeting, Aaron Davis, Executive Director of TreesUpstate, shared a thoughtful and engaging talk titled Trees: An American Tradition, exploring how tree planting has shaped American history and continues to shape the Upstate today.
Aaron traced the roots of Arbor Day back to 1872 in Nebraska, where Julius Sterling Morton helped launch a statewide tree planting effort just seven years after the Civil War. In a time of deep division and widespread deforestation, Arbor Day became a hopeful act that united communities around investing in the future through trees.
He then brought the story closer to home through the founding of TreesUpstate. Using a children’s story based on the life of founder Katie, an elementary art teacher inspired by time spent in the woods with her mother, Mary Lou Jones of Friends of Paris Mountain State Park, Aaron described how the loss of neighborhood forests to development sparked the creation of TreesGreenville, now TreesUpstate. Today, Greenville County averages about 39 percent tree canopy, with significant losses each year, though focused efforts in one historically under-canopied Greenville neighborhood have helped raise local canopy from the low 20s to over 40 percent.
Aaron closed by highlighting TreesUpstate’s core work planting, promoting, and protecting trees in parks, schools, and neighborhoods, partnering on habitat restoration, giving away thousands of trees, and teaching proper planting practices. His message was simple and hopeful: lasting change happens when communities come together to care for the places they love.
