Arbor Day button contest celebrates 15 years

Your local Arbor Day Committee announces an art contest to design a button for 2011 Arbor Day celebrations. Now in its 15th year, the contest is open to middle school and high school students who live within the Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls, and Lakeland school districts.

Winning art will be featured on a button that will be distributed, along with tree seedlings, at Arbor Day events in late April.

The winner of the contest will receive $75, a T-shirt featuring the winning artwork, and a supply of the Arbor Day buttons to give to family and friends. The second-place winner will be awarded $50; third place, $25.

First place artwork will be made into 2,000 buttons and given to fourth graders and others who participate in Arbor Day celebrations this April. Designs must be submitted by Friday, March 4. The local Arbor Day committee will choose up to 10 finalists. The selected art will then be judged by some real experts - a group of fourth-grade students.

Originally, fourth-graders were chosen to receive seedlings when the Arbor Day committee started its educational program in 1989.

"Fourth-grade students are young enough to be excited and old enough to understand," said Urban Forester Karen Haskew.

In addition, Idaho students are taught about their state in the fourth-grade.

Over 40,000 seedlings have been given away since the late 1980s.

Haskew said it seemed like the natural thing to do to have the fourth-graders be the judges of the button contest when it was launched.

Haskew said that there have been as few as 20 entries when the button contest first started, to over 100 entries in 2009.

"We do have some talented artists in the area," said Haskew. "We get good entries and I know the committee enjoys selecting the finalists - we can get pretty passionate about it."

When the first button contest winners were announced, the committee could only afford two-color printing. This lasted for six years until color copiers came along. Since then, the U.S. Forest Service has shared its copying resources to provide the current, four-color Arbor Day buttons.

Information regarding the contest has been distributed to public school art teachers. It is also available at the Coeur d'Alene Parks Department, 710 E. Mullan Ave., the Post Falls Parks and Recreation Department, 408 Spokane Street, the Hayden Urban Forestry office, 8930 N. Government Way, and on-line at http://www.cdaid.org/urban/index.html.

Arbor Day is a tree-planting holiday celebrated both nationally and internationally. Idaho's official Arbor Day is the last Friday in April.

The Arbor Day seedlings and buttons that are distributed are purchased with donations from local forest products companies, nurseries, and tree services.

Information: Karen Haskew, 769-2266