BURRILLVILLE – Julie Riendeau got the gorgeous day she hoped for at a tree planting on Tuesday, April 28 at Eccleston Field by William Callahan School honoring America’s 250 birthday and Arbor Day.
A member of the National Park Service Volunteers-in-Parks program with the Blackstone Heritage Corridor, Riendeau, her colleagues and a third grade class of a couple of dozen youngsters, were out in the sunshine and 60 degree mild breeze for the planting.
Ron Lapierre, chairman of the Burrillville Conservation Commission offered insight behind the decision to plant a tree with a group of third graders.
“It’s good for school children to experience what Arbor Day is about,” Lapierre said.
Arbor Day has long been recognized as important in Rhode Island. In 1907, it was mandated that “The commissioner of [RI] public schools shall prepare Arbor Day.”
Published May 12, 1911, for the 25th anniversary of Arbor Day, a booklet distributed to school children titled Twelfth Annual Program for the Observance of Arbor Day in Rhode Island Public Schools has a quotation shared by the Rhode Island Office of Commissioner of Education:
“There is nothing in which God asks so little of us and gives so much as in the planting of a tree. He gives the soil, the seed, the moisture, the sunshine, the air,–yes, and the selfless impulse to do our little part in just planting.”
The booklet also contains tree facts, poems, songs, Bible verses, speeches, and more, including a description of a walk in Burrillville from. “the eastern side of Pascoag Reservoir for two and a half miles into the town of Glocester, to the turnpike running west from Chepachet.”
Vegetation along the roadsides between the railroad station and the turnpike in Glocester, it notes, included Red Maple; American Chestnut; Gray Birch; American Elm; Alder; Pitch Pine; Black Cherry; Red Cedar; White Oak; American Aspen; White Ash; White Pine; Sassafras; Tupelo; Hemlock; Black Birch; Butternut; Poison Sumach, Juneberry; Honey Locust; Common Locust; Chestnut Oak; Black Oak and Scrub Oak.
That same year, 50,000 tree seedlings were distributed to school children in Providence as a gift from John Shepard.
The origin of Arbor Day began in the late 19th Century as “a practical movement… inaugurated by the present Secretary of Agriculture, the Hon. J. Sterling Morton, which has done more for the protection of our forests and the encouragement of tree planting than all our legislation. This was the establishment of Arbor Day, or tree-planting day,” according to the 1896 USDA book Arbor Day: Its History and Observance by Nathaniel Hillyer Egleston.
The tree-planting movement grew far and wide into a nationwide day.
In 2026, the young need to know trees provide habitat for animals, oxygen to breath, and shade to cool off in, and “hopefully they’ll ask their parents to plant a tree,” said Lapierre. To guide parents or anyone planting a tree, a pamphlet of instructions is provided to ensure it is planted in the right spot and treated with the care to thrive.
The 300 pound Rhode Island Red maple tree planted at the Callahan school field will grow to around 70 feet tall, with a 44 foot wide canopy, explained Jim Ross, vice-chairman of the Conservation Commission. The tree is four or five years old and fast-growing, noted Samantha Young, a member of the commission.
Before the planting, Riendeau recalled she had driven by the school last June and saw “the kids under the shade of the maple tree we planted in 2024.” Students sought refuge from the sun beneath a tree that was planted to recognize two teachers that year, Pat Lapierre and Rachel Auclair.
Each month, Riendeau teaches a segment to Erin Jasmin’s third grade class, and those students joined her and teacher’s aid Savannah Clark outdoors for the planting this week. Riendeau brings the young scholars “environmental and local history programs, including water pollution, Blackstone River ecology, animal adaptations, maple sugaring, local history making quill pens, taking a local history walk with Ranger Klyberg, nature walk/Earth Day Clean up” she explained.
In addition, Volunteer in Parks with the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor sponsors monthly programs explained Riendeau, who is one of the volunteers. Environmental activities for students are in keeping with the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor philosophy. The corridor, created in 2014, ties together 25 cities and towns in Rhode Island and Massachusetts recognized as important to the history of the early American Industrial Revolution.
In addition to getting children outdoors to appreciate and enjoy nature, Riendeau also has older youngsters at the school involved in Earth Day by cleaning up the area around Eccleston Field. The field is along the Clear River, that runs into the Blackstone River.
Her husband Steve Riendeau, also a member of the Volunteers-in-Parks program, helped out on Tuesday with the tree planting.
Conservation Commission member Young noted that trees in town are integral for the environment, and “with all the development going on in Burrillville it’s important for kids to learn to put trees back into the landscape.”
Young grew up in the town and said she enjoys the “rural character” and doesn’t understand why developments would want to tear down existing old trees.
“Areas are being clear-cut for solar fields. People don’t think much about trees,” added BCC member Roberta Lacey, who is also a RI Tree Steward, which required taking a ten week course about tree structure, planting, and root systems. Lacey said she regularly brings her grandchildren Gage Laroque, age two, and Crew Laroque, age four, out into nature.
A tree is being planted in every village in Burrillville, and the “kids will go by and think ‘we planted this tree,’” Riendeau said.
In fact, Jim Ross of BCC remembers that as a ten year old he was singing around a tree with his class at the Grove Street School in Woonsocket.
As the school year comes to a close, Riendeau will with Ranger Klyberg take the school children on a Harrisville history walk, looking at the waterfall, mill housing, and the grave of town benefactor Austin T. Levy.
Riendeau got the gorgeous weather she wanted for the tree planting and clean-up day, and whether rain or shine, she also leads the students in their classrooms in creating Earth Day crafts, teaching them to reuse items rather then discard them.
Meanwhile, residents of the town that want to share in tree planting can get seedlings, for free, at an event on Saturday, June 13 at the Pascoag Lodge, where 300 native tree seedlings will be distributed.
