GULF SHORES, AL — The Arbor Day tree giveaway is not just a matter of volunteers showing up and passing out a variety of trees to residents to promote the natural beauty and environmental benefits trees offer.

At least not with the Gulf Shores Beautification Board.

“I think the largest project the beautification board takes on each and every year is Arbor Day,” Public Works Director Mark Acreman said. “It’s something they start planning two years before each Arbor Day.”

So the culmination of handing off the trees on Saturday at Sims Park has been in the works for sometime. The event starts at 8:30 a.m.

The City of Orange Beach will also give away trees to residents on Saturday from 8-11 a.m. at the Community Development office in the City Hall complex on Alabama 161.

“The trees that we’ll give away any given year, those trees were selected two years earlier,” Acreman said. “The Beautification Board meets, they vote on a selection of trees, they’ll have a fruit tree and a number of trees we know will grow in this environment.”

And then even more of the community gets involved as high school students in the Horticulture Academy at Gulf Shores springs into action.

“Once these trees are selected then we’ll work with the school and the high school students as part of the horticulture program,” Acreman said. “They’ll grow these trees in the course of two years so that by the time the trees are ready to be given away to the citizens they are three or four or five feet tall and in a one-gallon container.

“The beautification board, the high school students and the Landscaping Division work together to do that.”

The resulting combined efforts and quality of the trees, Acreman said, is something the city can be proud of.

“They’re very nice,” he said. “I think they are the nicest selection of trees in Baldwin County that are given away on Arbor Day.”

This year Gulf Shores is giving away persimmon trees, sand live oak, paw paw, pecan, sassafras and a wing down.

“I think everybody’s allotted four trees,” Acreman said. “Come early because when we have fruit trees those go the quickest.”

Orange Beach will be giving away American beautyberry, buttonbush, green ash, Southern crabapple, bald cypress, live oak, paw paw, persimmon and Chickasaw plum trees.

Acreman said the Arbor Day effort is probably the Beautification Board’s biggest event, but they have other activities throughout the year to promote a beautiful Gulf Shores.

“The beautification board does a lot of projects throughout the city and gives several awards out to businesses and owners of homes that have gone above and beyond and recognize their landscaping and efforts to beautify the city,” he said.