Learn how planting trees can transform your environment and improve your quality of life.
Research shows that trees do everything fromincreasing property valuesto making us feel better.
And as the climate warms, trees can also help slow down the manmade changes brought to the planet.
Credit:Bob Stefko
Here are six surprising benefits of planting trees.
Dan Lambeis the CEO of theArbor Day Foundation, the largest nonprofit membership organization dedicated to planting trees.
Trees provide many additional benefits, including the following:
1.
Credit:Marty Baldwin
Trees add value to your home.
So, while money doesnt grow on trees, trees can put cash in your pocket.
Many of the tools needed to plant and care for trees make some of thebest gifts for gardeners.
Trees absorb greenhouse gases.
Lambe says a single mature tree can absorb 48 pounds of carbon dioxide in a year.
In this day and age of climate dread, people are asking themselves, what can they do?
Theres one thing that almost everybody can be a part of, and that is planting trees."
Every tree helps, and the benefits add up.
Theres one thing that almost everybody can be a part of, and that is planting trees.
Marty Baldwin
3.
Trees can lower your power bill.
Trees can also block winter winds that creep into your home through windows and doors.
Trees can boost your mental health.
Studiesfind urban dwellers have higher levels of stress and depression than people who live in rural areas.
The solution for the urban blues?
Nature, specifically trees.
More studies find that spending time in a natural environment correlates with a reduction in stress and depression.
Simply put, trees make us feel better.
Neighborhoods with a high tree density rate report 25% lower childhood asthma rates, Lambe says.
Trees filter air pollution particles out of the air we breathe, so they give us cleaner air.
One study found trees prevented 850 deathsfrom asthma in a single year.
Trees make urban areas cooler and safer.
Trees provide shade, and they cool cities as much as 10F, Lambe says.
That can prevent heat-related deaths.
And get this: a Baltimore studyfound that crime decreased in neighborhoods where there were more trees.
One might conclude that there was less crime because wealthier neighborhoods tend to have more trees.
The study controlled for that consideration and adjusted their models for a range of socioeconomic factors.
Trees still came out as being crime fighters.
How do trees do this?
It has long been believed that heat increases aggression.
So, trees may lower tempers by lowering temperatures.
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Children living in areas with more street trees.
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