Before Hurricane Irma, a row of coco plum trees lined the entrance to Pelican Gate Primary School.

Lois Freeman Augustine, the principal of the West End school, found it odd that she never saw children picking the edible fruit from the trees’ branches. One day, she sought to change that by plucking one of the fruits herself.

“One day I passed them and I just picked some … and I ate one and some children saw me do that. And they watched me like, ‘Teacher what are you doing!’” Ms. Augustine said.

The principal explained to the children that the fruits were safe to eat, she said, and in the years since then she has taught her students about the local trees.At Friday’s Arbour Day celebration at Pelican Gate, an annual event organised by the National Parks Trust, Ms. Augustine was one of several presenters who spoke to students about the importance of preserving the territory’s tree and plant life.

Planting trees

Capping off the day, students walked up the hillside above their campus, where they helped NPT staffers shovel dirt atop the roots of four newly planted trees.

“When you come back nextArbour Day … you will see how our trees are maturing and doing well, and children are definitely learning and partaking of it,” Ms.Augustine said.

Prior to planting the trees, students participated in an interactive lesson about trees’ importance to global health and Virgin Islands culture.

Rosemary Smith, a former environmental educator with the NPT, began her half-hour lesson with an anecdote explaining her own attachment to trees.

During the summer, when temperatures soar, Ms. Smith seeks respite beneath a mango tree just a few feet outside her house, she said, adding that those few feet make a world of difference.

“I feel cool, calm, refreshed,” she said, adding, “One of my favourite things to do is eat from the mango tree in summer.”

She spoke to the students about some of the territory’s native fauna — the crowd oohed and aahed upon hearing that tamarind trees could live upwards of 200 years — and its role in VI culture.

Hurricane Irma

Her message took a more somber turn when she discussed how the 2017 hurricanes destroyed a large percentage of the VI’s tree coverage, but she also pointed out how quickly much of this devastation was reversed.

If the trees and plants were able to bounce back so swiftly after such a traumatic event, so can VI residents, she said.

“Within a year we had our trees again. … This is what it means to be resilient, to be strong,” Ms. Smith said.

She drove her point home with various exercises, one of which called upon students to stand in front of their peers holding placards printed with keywords while students seated in the audience were asked to explain what they meant.

NPT Director Dr. Cassander Titley O’Neal encouraged students to think deeply about all they had learned and done during Arbour Day, and to keep these lessons in mind long after the observance ends.

“Let us all be vigilant and not take for granted what may seem to be just an annual day for planting trees,” Dr. Titley O’Neal said.