WOOSTER, Ohio -- More than 50 landscaping and horticulture students from the Medina County Career Center, the Wayne County Schools Career Center, Cuyahoga Community College and Ohio State University’s Agricultural Technical Institute will participate tomorrow (4/22) in the Ohio Landscape Association’s (OLA) PLANET Day of Service at Ohio State’s Secrest Arboretum in Wooster. Twenty-plus landscapers, nursery owners, and high school and college instructors will assist them.
In all, some 200 trees and shrubs -- oaks, maples, crabapples and more -- will be planted in the arboretum and on the surrounding campus of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC), where a tornado last fall destroyed more than 1,000 large trees and damaged buildings and greenhouses. A number of paver pads for new benches will go in too.
“The OLA Board of Directors feels strongly that it is time to rally together and help Secrest and OSU,” OLA Executive Director Sandy Munley said in a statement to members. “A tremendous number of people in the landscape and nursery business in Ohio attended the Ohio State University Agricultural Technical Institute and had the benefit of Secrest to use as a living classroom. This is a chance to give back.”
Hours are 9 a.m.-3:30 p.m. starting with an opening orientation session in OARDC’s Fisher Auditorium, located at the main entrance to the OARDC campus, 1680 Madison Ave., Wooster.
PLANET Day of Service, according to the event’s website, is designed to unite members of the Professional Landcare Network around the country for a day of giving back to their communities. The purpose is to give members of the lawn care and landscape industry an opportunity to plan, organize and carry out projects to benefit their communities.
OLA is a non-profit trade association for landscape contractors and their suppliers, with members from across Ohio. The group’s mission for more than 45 years has been to encourage professionalism and ethical standards among landscape contractors through educational opportunities and to promote the image of the landscape industry.