CAPE CORAL, Fla. — The City of Cape Coral planted dozens of trees at Cultural Park to replace those lost in Hurricane Ian on Wednesday.
The Arbor Day Foundation named the City of Cape Coral a 2023 Verizon Tree Planting recipient in January 2023. The Arbor Day Foundation grant funds the volunteer planting of 60 trees to help recover the tree canopy lost in the storm.
The Arbor Day Foundation’s Community Tree Recovery program, a national program underwritten by FedEx and Foundation members, aims to replace trees in communities affected by natural disasters throughout the United States. The program has held more than 1,050 events, distributing more than 5.3 million trees since its inception.
The new trees will make the park more beautiful, but there are also several health benefits.
The trees purify the air and encourage people to get outside and enjoy nature. But there are mental health impacts to this, too. Reid Kirchhoff, an Outpatient Therapist at the David Lawrence Centers for Behavioral Health, said the improved green space at Cultural Park can help people feel more at ease.
“It gets us out of sometimes our overly frantic, technical worlds and helps us find a more centered version of ourselves by being in nature, separating from some of the noises and distractions that we have,” he said.
He said getting out in nature is one of the most common things he tells his clients to do.
"Whenever they experience anxiety, especially those who are having a panic attack or an anxiety attack, I share with them the importance of changing their surrounding. It serves as a healthy distraction to all of our senses. All of our senses are then having to refocus and take in the bird, take in the person that we're passing, take in the sound of the wind blowing through our hair. And distracting our senses pulls us out of that anxiety place where we're hyper-focused on something else," Kirchhoff said.
Omar Leon, the Arborist for the City of Cape Coral, said having a tree canopy is extremely important.
“The tree canopy is part of the city's green infrastructure. It provides us with a lot of benefits for stormwater runoff management, rainfall, capturing carbon, reducing air temperature and the ambient temperature, and also capturing those chemicals in the air, those pollutants in the air, to help us breathe better and be able to enjoy the environment," he said.
To donate to the recovery efforts supported by this campaign or others nationwide, visit arborday.org.
