After Dylan Jeffries casually dumped a palmful of worms into his hands, fellow 6th-grader Rob Losik carefully set the worms on the growing mound of dirt at their feet, then picked up his shovel and started digging.
The two boys were digging holes to plant ironwood and prairie crabapple trees along with nanny berry and black haw bushes to help transform a 15-acre former farmfield into a savannah at Greene Valley Forest Preserve.
“I think it’s good because we’re planting more trees for the world so that in the future you won’t have to worry about having no oxygen and stuff like that,” Jeffries said.
The students were among 50 6th-graders from Jefferson Junior High School participating Monday in the restoration.
“It started off as Arbor Day, and we used to do Arbor Day programs,” said Tom Pray, naturalist supervisor at Fullersburg Woods Environmental Education Center in Oak Brook.
“But everybody starts thinking `Plant a tree-the world’s saved,’ and it’s not always that way,” said Pray. “The natural world is so much more than just a tree. So we look at it with a holistic approach where not just trees, but shrubs, grasses-all of these-need to go together.”