Slideshow: New Jersey Arbor Day Celebration

Freehold Township's Durand Park Memorial Arboretum was home to New Jersey's Arbor Day festivities on Friday. The municipality was selected as host of the 2011 celebration because of its active, 50-year-old Shade Tree Commission and its 30th anniversary as a Tree City USA.

Volunteers from New Jersey Youth Corps and Freehold Township Boy Scout Troop 158 helped plant over 140 trees starting at 8 a.m. The ceremonial activities began at 11 a.m. with bagpiper Tim Gall and a color guard comprised of members of the Cpl. Philip A. Reynolds Detachment Marine Corps League and the Freehold VFW Post #4374.

The Clifton T. Barkalow Middle School chorus and band, the Freehold Intermediate School band, the Dwight D. Eisenhower School band, and Shore Regional High School students performed songs during the event.

New Jersey Agriculture Secretary Douglas H. Fisher and astronaut Dr. Gregory Linteris were the guests of honor at the ceremony, discussing the importance of Arbor Day and caring for our forests. Linteris, who grew up in Demarest, worked with the Demarest Shade Tree Commission to bring eastern white pine seeds on the April 1997 space flight he participated in. Freehold Township and Freehold Borough were in a group of 15 towns that received the seeds, which have been tended at the New Jersey Forest Nursery in Jackson.