COEUR d'ALENE - Something exciting happens for Kootenai County fourth-graders every Arbor Day.

They go to school as usual, but return to their homes with looks of wonder in their eyes as they show their families the special gifts they received at school that day: their very own baby trees.

"We think fourth-graders are interested in earth science," said Kootenai County Arbor Day Committee co-chair John Schwandt. "This is a great way to get them involved in community science."

For 28 years, the county's Arbor Day Committee has presented area fourth-graders with completely free seedlings to commemorate the day.

This year, the organization will also celebrate a milestone. During its nearly 30-year existence, the committee has sent more than 60,000 young trees out into the community with children.

"Fourth-graders are at a great age to learn about this sort of thing," Schwandt said. "Trees are a critical part of our environment, and we feel this is a great way to introduce them to that."

The program has blossomed from simply sending saplings home with students to getting young artists involved in annual art contests. Fifth-grade students in Coeur d'Alene can enter the Arbor Day poster contest, while middle- and high-school students submit artwork for the Arbor Day button that will be distributed with the seedlings and at Arbor Day events.

Schwandt, of Coeur d'Alene, is a forest pathologist with the Urban Forestry Committee of Coeur d'Alene and is a founding member of the Arbor Day program. He credits the initiation of the program to the late Karen Haskew, a past urban forester for the city of Coeur d'Alene who passed away in 2012.

"I think it was Karen's brainchild that we wanted to do something more for Arbor Day," he said. "She wanted to get involved in Tree City USA."

Tree City USA is a national program that recognizes communities for having an active tree board or department, a tree-care ordinance, a comprehensive community forestry-based program and an Arbor Day observance. The city of Coeur d'Alene is now in its 30th year of being an acknowledged Tree City.

That may be in part because of an Arbor Day program that sprouted from humble beginnings.

"When we first started out, people would get a variety of strange trees," Schwandt said with a chuckle.

He explained that when he and Haskew firmly rooted the idea for the program, they reached out to businesses and nurseries in the community for their assistance. He said they asked for "leftovers," or anything the nurseries could give. Schwandt began talking to people in lawn care and timber industries, and made some long-term Arbor Day relationships with businesses such as Stimson Lumber and the Idaho Veneer Company.

"We have just been really blessed by their generous support," he said.

The program operates solely on volunteer hours and donations. Volunteers bag and tag the little trees which are then delivered by urban foresters.

"This has been a pretty amazing program because we've never charged overhead," he said. "It's strictly volunteer."

Schwandt said the seedlings are about $1 or less each, and each year several species of conifers, hardwoods, flowering trees, "all nice shade-type trees" are among those distributed. More than 60 species have gone out into the community, including the eastern redbud, flowering dogwood, water birch and European beech, which is "a magnificent large tree," Schwandt said.

Some trees have become part of public, common areas while others have become fixtures on private properties. When seedlings are damaged or somehow set aside, never quite completing the journey from parent nurseries in the Northwest to the hands of fourth-graders, Schwandt said he takes them home and plants them.

"As a result, now I have 200 species of trees and shrubs in my yard," he said with a laugh.

Arbor Day is April 25 in Idaho this year. Multiple Arbor Day celebrations are scheduled for April 26.

For more information about Coeur d'Alene's celebrations, visit the city's Arbor Day Web page: bit.ly/1nuPQBR