City of Azle gives away celebrity inspired trees for Arbor Day

AZLE — For the third year in a row, the City of Azle has given away trees to its citizens for free. The city continues this tradition as part of its Tree City USA designation which it earned last year. The city gave away 150 trees at The Feedlot Saturday Nov. 2. Unlike prior years, city officials had a professional arborist speak at the event and added a little extra fun by giving each tree a unique name like Stick Cheney, Spruce Willis, Bark Simpson, Shady Gaga, Twiggy Smalls, Treeoncé and many more.

“I would like to take credit for the name idea. It was not mine, but the names we tried to play off rhyming with the tree names,” city Community and Marking Specialist Kristen Pegues said. “So far, it's been a hit. One of the first ones to go strictly based on the name was Bark Griswold. We also wanted to hand out some information this year. We haven't done that in the past, and people have asked, ‘what do you know about this tree.’ We’re not arborists, so we tell them, ‘I don't know.’ We do have an arborist here this year, and he did some tree talk, which is great. I think a lot of people learned that we have been planting trees wrong.”

A.J. Thibodeaux with Save a Tree spoke at the event, giving advice and guidance on tree planting and care. Save a Tree is a full service commercial and residential tree care company. Thibodeaux is also on the board of directors for the Texas chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture and a certified arborist. Thibodeaux said trees have been his single source of income for the past 41 years.

“Anything that can raise awareness to tree planting and sustainability going forward is a good thing,” Thibodeaux said of the event. “So, you know, obviously the International Society of Arboriculture is a huge supporter of Arbor Day, the state Arbor Day for Texas was actually yesterday. Anything that communities can do like this to raise awareness to sustainability and tree planting, we lose way more trees every year than are getting replanted. So, I believe it's great thing… It's only a renewable resource if we make it.”