Summary

The City and the Village Preservation and Improvement Society celebrated this year’s Arbor Day on April 25 with the distribution and planting of 222 oak saplings and other native trees.
The Virginia Department of Forestry presented Falls Church with a flag to commemorate the City’s 48^th year as a Tree City USA.

A long history in the City

The City of Falls Church recognizes the value that trees provide our community and, by proclamation, established April 25, 2026, as this year’s Arbor Day.

Arbor Day has a long history in Falls Church. The Village Preservation and Improvement Society (VPIS) initiated the first Arbor Day in Virginia in 1892. The previous year, a tornado struck the Jefferson Institute, a school located at the current site of Jessie Thackrey Preschool behind Donald S. Frady Park. The roof was torn off, and surrounding trees were destroyed while the children were inside. As a healing ceremony for the children and to restore the tree cover near the school, the Society and the students planted trees together, establishing the first Virginia Arbor Day.

VPIS and the City of Falls Church now sponsor an annual Arbor Day Celebration with City Arborist Charles Prince overseeing and conducting a ceremonial tree planting. In addition to welcoming remarks from VPIS President Bonnie Murphy, representatives from the Urban Forestry Commission, City Council, and the Virginia Department of Forestry also participated in this year’s ceremony.

Arbor day tree planting in Falls Church — VPIS volunteers plant native trees in City parkland.

Forty-eight years as Tree City USA

The Virginia Department of Forestry presented a flag to commemorate the 48^th year the City of Falls Church has been recognized as a Tree City USA. A city must qualify each year, and ours is the longest Tree City streak in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

For Tree City status, there are four core standards established by the Arbor Day Foundation that must be met to ensure effective urban forestry management, one of which is the Arbor Day Observance and Proclamation. Communities must also have a legally constituted municipal board or commission (the Urban Forestry Commission) responsible for the care of public trees, a formal tree care ordinance, and a minimum annual expenditure of $2 per capita on community tree care activities. The Falls Church Urban Forestry Division performs these activities and is led by Certified Arborist Lydia Mooney.

Free trees

In recent years, VPIS has provided an annual Arbor Day tree giveaway at their Farmer’s Market booth. With the help of four high school environmental enthusiasts and many VPIS volunteers, VPIS purchased and distributed on Arbor Day 123 oak tree saplings (oak trees were chosen as the 2026 Tree of the Year), along with 36 native trees rescued from volunteers’ yards. Along with saplings that were adopted immediately following Arbor Day, a total of 222 trees reached not only individuals, but also businesses and churches.

A Mennonite Farm in Harrisonburg, Virginia adopted 93 saplings to add biodiversity to their 300 acres, and St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church adopted trees to recover tree canopy impacted by neighboring school redevelopment. The City of Falls Church also purchased oak saplings; 60 were planted on Earth Day with different volunteer groups in the Crossman and Howard Herman parks, and 90 were planted by volunteers just after the Arbor Day celebration in Cherry Hill Park.

For more information, please visit the Village Preservation and Improvement Society website.