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Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Mike Hardy, take a bough. I mean a bow. Mike is one of 20 people around the country being honored with the 2009 Arbor Day Award for their dedication to planting trees and conservation efforts. He figures he's planted 4,000 trees around the city in places like South Philly, the Northeast, Fishtown, Overbrook and East Falls but mostly in his University City neighborhood, where he started University City Green in 1998. "It is people like Michael Hardy who are truly making a difference by putting their values into thoughtful actions that will have a lasting, positive effect in the world,” said John Rosenow, chief executive of the Arbor Day Foundation. Arbor Day is this Friday, and the foundation's been giving these awards since 1972. Mike's in good company; other honorees include Nobel Peace Prize recipient Wangari Maathai and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who's a veritable green machine.

Anybody involved with trees in this town knows Mike. I've run into him at Masterman School and University City - and not just at tree-plantings. I've seen him at drought-gardening workshops. I've watched him plant bulbs and perennials and I've often heard him talk about stormwater management through plantings.

Mike is a youthful 71 and says he'll keep planting trees till he can't do it anymore. "My back is telling me you've gotta slow down, old man," he says, "and when they announced this as a lifetime achievement award, I thought, they're trying to tell me something." True. They're telling you you've done a good job.

Trees aren't just pretty things to decorate the landscape," Mike is fond of saying. "They're living machines that can turn things around." They just need a little help getting in the ground.

  

Posted by virginia smith @ 1:42 PM  Permalink | 1 comment
Comments   
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 7:39 AM, 04/24/2009
    Trees are the answer
    pootershow


1 comments
About Virginia A. Smith
Ginny Smith, a Philadelphia native, worked as a reporter at newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Ohio – with six short months at the end of the Bulletin tossed in – before returning to Philadelphia in 1985 to join the Inquirer. Her favorite beats here have included Center City, roving around Pennsylvania (and getting paid for it!) and alternative medicine. She’s also been City Editor and Pennsylvania Editor. Ginny has been happily writing – and learning - about gardening fulltime since 2006. She’s won two silver medals of achievement from the national Garden Writers Association and in 2011, Bartram’s Garden honored her with its Green Exemplar award for her stories about “the region’s deeply rooted horticultural history, cultural attractions and bountiful gardens.”