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Jim Bell of Bohlin, Cywinski, Jackson and his coworkers plant patriot elms at Coal Street Park on Arbor Day. (Pete G. Wilcox|Times Leader)

Bohlin, Cywinski, Jackson coworkers plant Patriot Elm trees at Coal Street Park in Wilkes-Barre on Arbor Day. (Pete G. Wilcox|Times Leader)

Vinnie Cotrone from the Penn State Cooperative Extension, left, gets help from Avery Fierman, 14, spreading wood mulch around a Homestead Elm planted on Arbor Day in front of the Wyoming Valley West Middle School in Kingston. Fierman is an eighth grade environmental science student at the school. (Pete G. Wilcox|Times Leader)

Vinnie Cotrone from the Penn State Cooperative Extension, right, plants a Homestead Elm with a little help of some students at the Wyoming Valley West Middle School in Kingston on Arbor Day. (Pete G. Wilcox|Times Leader)

Vinnie Cotrone from the Penn State Cooperative Extension prunes a few branches of a Patriot Elm that was being planted in Coal Street Park in Wilkes-Barre on Arbor Day. (Pete G. Wilcox|Times Leader)

WILKES-BARRE — Arbor Day started out cold and windy on Friday morning, but a dozen hardy tree planters didn’t seem to mind.

“You’ll warm up if you start shoveling,” urban forester Vinnie Cotrone from the Penn State Cooperative Extension told the group.

Not that they needed encouragement.

“This is wonderful. I love the idea,” said Pam Mahoney-Casey of Shavertown as she used a metal rake to level the ground around a freshly planted elm, one of five trees the architectural firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson donated and planted at Coal Street Park in honor of 50 years of practicing in Wilkes-Barre.

“We wanted to make a contribution to the city and to the environment,” senior associate Allen Kachel said, explaining Coal Street Park was an especially appropriate location because Bohlin Cywinski Jackson had designed the park and its pool and ice-skating rink decades ago.

“Although our practice focuses on energy-efficient buildings,” BCJ announced in a news release, “planting trees remains one of the cheapest and most effective ways of drawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Trees act as natural pollution filters, absorbing pollutants through their leaf surface. A single tree can absorb as much as 48 pounds of CO2 per year and can sequester one ton of CO2 by the time it reaches 40 years old.”

“A single tree can produce enough oxygen for two adults.”

All that, and shade too.

As he helped plant the trees, Cotrone explained they are Patriot Elms, a hybrid variety bred to be disease-resistant and to thrive even in less than ideal soil. He pointed out that when the holes were backfilled, each tree’s roots would be covered with dirt but the soil shouldn’t extend above the tree collar — the part at which the roots start to flare out from the trunk — because that could suffocate the tree.

Later that afternoon, Cotrone repeated similar advice to a group of students who planted a tree from the Kingston Shade Tree Commission at Wyoming Valley West Middle School on Chester Street in Kingston.

The mulch they were adding would mimic the ground in a forest, Cotrone told the youngsters, and again, it was important not to pile it too high against the trunk.

After the tree — this one was another hybride called the Homestead Elm — was planted and had a big first-day-in-the-ground drink of 10 gallons of water, student Avery Fierman, 14, said he was happy to participate. “It’s great to help the school and the environment.”

“Happy Arbor Day, everybody,” Cotrone said as the students returned to class. “Tell your parents they have to plant a tree with you, and see what they say.”