“Look at it very well, and remember the place,” Deputy Premier Dr. Kedrick Pickering said as he watched an Althea Scatliffe Primary School student plant a tree shortly after an Arbour Day ceremony on Friday morning at the J. R. O’Neal Botanic Gardens.
“You should remember it, so years from now you can tell people that you planted it,” Dr. Pickering advised.
More than four decades ago, the legislator himself was in the student’s position, he said: He returned home from school with a seedling given to him at an Arbour Day celebration. Today, that tree provides shade at his East End home, he told attendees.
Arbour Day was started in the Virgin Islands in 1953 by Joseph O’Neal, who was then the chairman of the National Parks Trust. Since then, trees have been planted around the territory to mark the day.
See the Dec. 4, 2014 edition for full coverage.
{fcomment}