If you listen to student announcements at assemblies, you have heard Sixth Former Nate Mirin talk about Tree-Plenish. Addressing the upper school, Mirin invites students to go out and plant trees.
“Tree-Plenish is an organization which looks to help high schools basically manage tree planting events,” Mirin said. “It is a completely college and high school student-run non-profit, which looks to do every part of the process. First, they try to get grants to help pay for [the event]. Then, they work with the outreach program in order to try and help get the word out about the program to as many schools as possible before also providing logistics and actually ordering the saplings for the events.”
Mirin stumbled upon the organization when applying for an internship.
“About a year ago, I applied for an internship through Tree-Plenish, and I was lucky enough to be selected,” Mirin said. “I’m currently on their outreach team, and I’ve been that way for about a year or so after learning about it. And, through the internship, I’ve brought it to Haverford.”
Tree-Plenish originated from a Massachusetts high schooler’s senior project.
“Five years ago in 2018 or 2019 there was one local school up in Massachusetts. A student said, ‘Hey, we should have a tree planting event.’ It caught on with the local community, and it’s just sprouted out ever since,” Mirin said.
And sprout it has: according to Mirin, the group has had an immense impact on the U.S. and abroad.
“So for Tree-Plenish, as of this month we’re international. We did a program in Nigeria. But it’s all over the world and all across the country,” Mirin said. “There are ones in California, Texas, Wyoming, a whole bunch of the Northeast, South, Southeast, Northwest, Midwest. It’s solid wood country.”
“So at the Haverford School’s event, we were able to give away 300 trees. Over 300 schools have been part of [the group], and in just 2022 alone, they have planted nearly 50,000 trees.”
“I really enjoy working with the environment, trying to increase biodiversity in the local area, especially in urban and suburban areas where the biggest green space is frequently just grass.”
Nate Mirin ’23
Mirin referenced believes in the importance of biodiversity.
“I mean, I really enjoy working with the environment, trying to increase biodiversity in the local area, especially in urban and suburban areas where the biggest green space is frequently just grass. So definitely trying to increase the biodiversity and trying to plant more trees, because trees have a huge variety of benefits: less AC usage, more wanting to be outside,” Mirin said. “It’s also just prettier landscaping, to be totally honest.”
Ultimately, Mirin hopes this year’s tree planting event can become a school tradition.
“This doesn’t have to be a one-year event,” Mirin said. “There’s definitely a demand for this program to continue on for years to come, so just keep working at it, since I know there’s a lot of people who we had to turn away from trees as we just didn’t have enough. So definitely if in the future, we can continue this event, that would be awesome both for our school’s impacts to positive impacts in the local community and also just to help out the environment locally.”
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