Margay Blackman gives Ian Blount, new head of Brockport’s Tree Board, a hug after he presented her with a Certificate of Appreciation for her work as founder and former head of Brockport’s Tree Board. This is the seventh year that the Tree Board has sponsored a tree planting event and the fourth year that Brockport has been recognized as a Tree City.It was a brisk morning, 36 degrees and windy, for the Brockport Tree Board tree planting event but there were still enough volunteers from the high school, The College at Brockport students and facilities maintenance ground crew and Tree Board members to complete the Arbor Day tasks: seventeen trees planted along Barry Street and in the Barry Street Park.
Following the opening ceremonies in the Barry Street Park, featuring a talk by new Tree Board Chairman Ian Blount, a presentation of a Certificate of Appreciation for former chair Margay Blackman, a poem composed and read by Bill Heyen and instructions on how to plant a tree by Rick Lair, Supervisor of Facilities Maintenance, The College at Brockport, the volunteers had a short walk to warm up for digging holes along the street.
Bailey Kline, a sophomore at Brockport High School, claims a shovel from a batch supplied for the volunteers who planted 17 trees on Barry Street and the Barry Street Park on April 27.Aided by a grant from the Department of Environmental Conservation that covers the cost for the purchase of trees both in 2012 and 2013, the Brockport Tree Board was able to provide 17 trees this year. Over the past seven years, the Tree Board has planted 200 trees in Brockport. The village has been declared a Tree City for the last four years.
Bill Heyen contributed to the opening ceremonies for the seventh annual Arbor Day event in Brockport as he read from an appropriate poem entitled Emancipation Proclamation, a poem about trees, while members of the ground crew from The College at Brockport and other volunteers listened. 
Surrounding a hole they dug that will contain a Syringas Reticulata Ivory Silk tree are Yisei Na, a junior, Shannon Allen, a sophomore, Bailey Kline, a sophomore, (all at Brockport High School), and Carol Hannan, a village trustee.The poem will be inscribed on a plaque to be placed on the Poet’s Walk near a tree adjacent to the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester later this year.
