Do saplings planted after Arbor Day have a high survival rate?

On March 10, at Tuohou Wetland in Xuecheng District, more than 300 cadres and workers from the Municipal Housing and Urban-Rural Development, Administrative Law Enforcement, Municipal Landscape and Gardening, Planning and other units swung their shovels to dig the soil, water and add seedlings. In the course of one morning, they planted more than 3,000 seedlings of various types, including black pine, deodar cedar, tall glossy privet, evergreen tree species and flowering shrubs, to add greenery to the urban area and welcome Arbor Day. (Reported by Qilu Evening News on March 11)

With smog currently raging, action to control it brooks no delay, people's environmental awareness of tree planting and afforestation is growing deeper, and at the same time they are more deeply aware of the great significance of "green" to our living ecological environment. Therefore, every year on March 12, Arbor Day, local governments, schools and work units, as well as ordinary citizens, spontaneously organize tree-planting activities, and the March afforestation activities have already become a scenic line.

As people's environmental awareness continues to rise, further increasing the vegetation coverage rate in urban and rural areas has become the routine work of landscape and gardening departments at all levels of government. Especially when smog severely intrudes on our lives and threatens the life, health and safety of the general public, planting flowers and grass and trees, afforesting our homeland, beautifying life and freshening the air have become a consensus among people.

But the current situation of "planting trees every year yet seeing no trees" is truly embarrassing, and it deserves our reflection even more. Since we go to the trouble of organizing large numbers of people to carry out tree-planting activities, we should try our best to raise the survival rate of the saplings. In the past, many pitiful little saplings, especially on dry hillsides with little rain, survived by relying on the sky because of the lack of later care, or were planted unscientifically; they were either blown crooked by strong winds and could not grow healthily, or died of drought and could not survive. The originally vibrant and lively green saplings ended up with a very low survival rate simply because no one paid them any attention after planting.

To fundamentally solve this problem, the departments that organize tree-planting activities must have a rigorous sense of responsibility. One is that before planting saplings, it is best to invite relevant professional tree cultivation personnel to explain the knowledge of scientific tree planting, so as to ensure correct planting. The other is to adopt a sapling "adoption" system to strengthen the sense of responsibility of those planting trees, so that tree-planting activities cannot be treated as a "fashion show"; once planted, the survival rate should be guaranteed as much as possible. While carrying out activities, we must pay attention to actual results and ensure continuity; otherwise, the inspiration of positive energy will, contrary to expectations, turn into a negative impact.