Niles High School student planting hundreds of trees across Southwest Michigan

 

NILES, Mich. -- Earth Day may have come and gone, but that's not stopping one local teenager from trying to make a difference in his community.

This is the second year in a row that Niles High School Junior Sawyer Lundberg has planted trees as part of the Trees Across Berrien program. Last year he planted 130 trees; this year he plans to plant 350, to make a positive environmental impact in Southwest Michigan.

Although, he won't be planting them all by himself. 

Lunderg is going to pass them out to classrooms in schools like Niles and Edwardsburg, where those students will be able to take seedlings to plant in their communities.

ABC57 caught up with Lundberg at the Berrien County Fairgrounds on Sunday, where he was joined by friends, classmates and even one of his high school teachers to prep the trees for delivery.

"So the project, we get a bunch of orders of trees from around the area, and they're different kinds like white pine, and oak and we've got a couple others," Lundberg said. "So today we bag up the trees and wrap them and tomorrow I'm going to distribute the trees to Northside and Niles High School, East Side and a couple other places."

Lundberg doesn't want it to end there.

On Monday he'll read Would You, Could You Plant a Tree to a Kindergarten class at Northside Elementary, to encourage them to do their part in helping the environment. 

It's a message he hopes everyone will hear.

"I want them to take away that anyone can do it, and it's really easy to take that first step of recycling or planting a garden or some trees," he said. "Maybe a simple trash cleanup. If you see some trash along the road or at the beach, you can stop or pick it up."

If you would like to follow Lundberg's example-- the Berrien Trees Project will be selling seedlings, rain barrels, tumbling composters and more items at the Berrien County Fairgrounds on April 28 from 10am-6pm and April 29 from 9am-1pm.