Cape Fear Garden Club honors founders on Arbor Day

WILMINGTON, NC (WWAY) — Today is Arbor Day, and Wilmington now has another oak tree to carry on the legacy of life.

Every Arbor Day, the Cape Fear Garden Club plants a tree to honor a person or event. This morning, it replaced a dead oak with a vibrant, young one at Oakdale Cemetery.

The new tree is in honor of the founding members of the Cape Fear Garden Club, which has blossomed into the largest garden club in the state.

Children from Snipes Academy joined the celebration to learn more about the importance of Arbor Day.

“We, the Cape Fear Garden Club, promote planting trees, planting azaleas, making our city beautiful, passing on the heritage of a tree,” Arbor Day chair Marjorie Way said. “The live oak tree is a heritage, a lifetime tree that will grow on for many years, hundreds we hope.”

The young tree is about five years old and could live for up to 400 years.

Nine of the 12 charter members of the garden club the tree is dedicated, are buried in Oakdale Cemetery.