Maropeng staff plant olive trees for Arbour Week

Maropeng staff celebrated the start of spring and Arbour Week yesterday by planting two olive trees, one on either side of the entrance.

Arbour Day was first celebrated on the September 1 1983 and in 1999 the South African government decided to extend it to Arbour Week, celebrated between September 1 and 7.

All Maropeng staff were invited to the ceremony, which was attended by about 15 people, who enjoyed the warm spring sunshine and fresh air.

Zanomsa Zozi, Maropeng’s operations manager, said, “With Africa being the birthplace of humanity, we decided to plant the olive trees, which are the oldest cultivated trees in history and were first cultivated in Africa.”

Zozi heads up Maropeng’s, Green Team, which focuses on environmental issues.

The idea behind the tree planting was to practice sustainability, because if we are not careful and neglect the planting of trees, we face the possibility of falling victims to Graham Lester George’s quote, contained in the Maropeng exhibition: “If we do not act now, the terrible irony is that our great grandchildren will only know of ancient forest through pictures in books printed on paper that contributed to their extinction.”