Trees are a crucial part of the lifeline for any community.
This belief is one of several often-spoken mottos from the members of Keep Fort Smith Beautiful, a 10-member volunteer group that strives to coordinate and participate in the planting of more trees throughout the city. The group's efforts are to help beautify the city so that both residents and visitors will be impressed and inspired, said Andrea Beckman, executive director for Keep Fort Smith Beautiful.
"I hope residents notice the trees because it's a quality-of-life issue," she said. "We hope to make a positive impact on the quality of life here. Trees provide all kinds of things. Environmentally, trees are good, and they increase property value."
Tree canopy
One of Keep Fort Smith Beautiful's latest projects was the planting of 27 Princeton elm trees along the median of Midland Boulevard near the Midland Bridge. Standing about eight feet tall, the trees were planted by representatives from Frank Sharum Landscaping and Design and have added a distinct, appealing flavor to the area, Beckman said.
"It's been a neglected part of town," she said of the area where the trees were planted. "We chose that area for the trees because that's an entrance to our city for the people coming into our town; it was a blank concrete median before.
"We knew back in the 1970s and the 1980s that Midland had medians and trees all the way down the boulevard," Beckman added. "We thought that we would help recreate that, so we had the area excavated, filled with dirt and had a sprinkler system installed. We wanted to make a good first impression for people."
Beckman said she and other Keep Fort Smith Beautiful members expect the trees to "grow tall with a high canopy." This means the tree's limbs, while growing, won't interfere with traffic, she said.
"We had to have the sprinkler system to ensure sustainability, so the trees would survive," Beckman said. "We had to have a line board underneath the highway to connect the water system to the sprinkler system."
The project is part of Keep Fort Smith Beautiful's mission to increase what the members call the "tree canopy percentage" of Fort Smith. Currently the city's tree-canopy percentage is 13, a number that is too low, according to Paula Linder, secretary for Keep Fort Smith Beautiful.
"At one time, I read somewhere that Fort Smith was designated a tree city," she said. "A survey was done and the tree canopy was at 13 percent, but I want people to plant more trees."
The Midland tree project and other Keep Fort Smith Beautiful projects have been made possible via a $50,000 donation from area resident S.W. "Bud" Jackson, Beckman said.
"Bud gave the money a couple years ago to increase the tree canopy in Fort Smith," she said. "Each tree at Midland cost $250 to $300, and Sharum's did the actual planting and had the sprinklers installed. The ground cover is a decomposed granite substance, which was done by Sharum's, too."
Jackson said he felt grateful he could make the donation to help Keep Fort Smith Beautiful.
"Tree canopy is protection from the sun — protection that is provided by the tree's shade," he said. "Trees are good for this generation. Trees are very important, and shade canopy is valuable to the community."
Frank Sharum also values the trees.
"The No. 1 thing here is, we are re-introducing an elm tree — the Princeton elm," he said. "The American elms all died years ago. They got the Dutch elm disease, but what we have now is from an American elm tree that survived and was found up in Boston.
"This tree is an upright tree, also known as a street tree," Sharum added. "This is setting the tone to give Fort Smith a big-city look. You go to large cities and see trees that are 70 feet tall, so the trees at Midland are nice."
The group's other projects include planting trees and flowers at the interchange located at Interstate 540 and Rogers Avenue, as well as an area at Greenwood Road and Rogers Avenue, among others.
'Waste warriors'
Initially starting as a litter pick-up group about 10 years ago, Keep Fort Smith Beautiful grew out of an affiliation with the Keep America Beautiful and Keep Arkansas Beautiful campaigns, said Linder. The group hosts the Keep Fort Smith Beautiful Facebook page and www.keepfsbeautiful.org and is in need of new members, she said.
"People can join the group and help," Linder said. "Just come and help us. We need more people to go out and help us with these events and projects."
In addition to harboring a self-proclaimed fierce dedication to trees, the members of Keep Fort Smith Beautiful also take the issue of littering seriously, Beckman said. The group conducts spring and fall litter pick-up days and will begin a program that will teach fourth-grade students in Fort Smith Public Schools "about how wrong littering is" in the coming weeks, Beckman said.
"I think the kids will be receptive to our presentation and our mission," she said. "Young minds are impressionable, and I hope we make an impression on them. We want to make little waste warriors out of them."
Linder also is optimistic that more people will become aware of the littering problem and do something constructive about it.
"Back in 2008, I would walk and run to the fitness center every day, and I'd pick up litter," she said. "The litter drove me crazy, so I wrote a letter to the editor and asked people to claim a space — to be in charge of a space and make sure that the space stays clean."
In a matter of months, Keep Fort Smith Beautiful members started conducting litter pick-up days to help improve the look of several areas in Fort Smith.
"We did what I call a 'Trash Attack' over near Zero Street, because an area behind Walmart and the railroad tracks was completely littered," Linder said. "We are doing more of those to pick up trash at different spots."
According to Beckman, numerous reasons contribute to what she said was a littering problem in the area.
"People see litter that is already there in an area, so they drop their trash, and sometimes people are just lazy," she said. "Sometimes there aren't trash cans available or the trash cans already are full, and other people just grew up not knowing any better because they see their parents litter."
Bicentennial projects
Keep Fort Smith Beautiful members also plan on planting 200 trees as part of Fort Smith's bicentennial celebration in the near future, Beckman said.
"There will be various types of trees; we haven't totally decided on all the locations yet, but we know that the trees will be native to Arkansas," she said. "It's a pretty big undertaking, but we know there's always places for trees. We're going to keep doing these projects as long as we can do them."
Linder agreed. She hopes that a welcome sign can someday be placed on Interstate 540.
"We have to get a sign that says, 'Welcome to Fort Smith,' on 540, because there isn't a sign on 540 that says that," Linder said. "People won't know they are in Fort Smith because there isn't a sign that says that on the interstate. My hope is, it will happen someday."