Unfortunately this tree no longer exists. Unlike the many stories of great trees, this one is of the lowly, scrubby box elder.

“Mom, mama, mom, mom, can I tell you, mom? Mama?”

In September 1999, my 13-year-old daughter came to me for help after being assigned an eighth-grade science project: “creating an experiment with plants.” Being an avid amateur gardener

Our kids are 42 and 44. One of them planted a seed in a school project and brought it home in a cup when it was several inches high.

Fifteen years ago I made a donation to the Arbor Day Foundation and received a bag of 10 blue spruce "sticks."  They sure didn't look like much!

Where I grew up in Clarendon Hills, we had a large blue spruce in the front yard and two in the backyard. The branches hung down to the ground.

Studded with galls and marked by a long, zipper-like scar, the last of seven elm trees presided massively over our front yard, sheltering generations of squirrels and at least one small human who w

I grew up on Main Street in Lisle. My grandpa worked and my grandparents lived in The Morton Arboretum, so trees were a big part of my life!

My parents retired to a smaller home in the Aurora area as they aged, and their home had a cherry tree in the backyard. I would visit them weekly from the north suburbs with my children.

Redbuds always remind me of the beauty of spring, the awakening from the winter and the coming of a vibrant summer.

My husband and I moved into a new home in Grayslake in 1993. The subdivision was new, but it was built on the site of a former horse farm. 

All of the homes were the same Queen Anne style on the short 6400 block of North Newland Avenue in Chicago in the 1950s.

Scott Grams, the executive director of the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association, shares the importance of a childhood tree and what it meant to the kids of a suburban tract home community.

A mighty oak stood within Glacial Park in McHenry County for over 400 years.

My tree is not tall nor mighty today, but what it represents is powerful.

When I was a small child, I liked animals. This is easy--animals have recognizable faces, personalities, behaviors. Animals are athletic, they like to run and play!

We call her Betty. Betty White (Oak)! She was discovered during a New Year's Eve Oak Rescue at a private property along Route 14 in Harvard.