23-05-2025
‘If Our Trees Could Talk' highlighting SF nature
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – A man who's spent many hours planting seeds around Sioux Falls has grown a book that highlights the city's natural beauty and history.
School is out, where can kids find free meals?
Following years of work, 'If Our Trees Could Talk: Discovering the urban forest of Sioux Falls' is now ready for the public's eyes.
Paul DeJong, the retired owner of the Landscape Garden Center, is the was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in his late 50s and says working on this book has been a labor of love.
'You're basically planting something that hopefully outlives yourself. So you're planting a legacy, much like this book as a coffee table book, it's going to outlive my lifetime. And that's not being pessimistic because it's got a long shelf life,' DeJong said.
The idea for the book stemmed from a conversation with Heather Kittelson with the Mary Jo Wegner Arboretum.
'Paul's passion comes through when he talks about nature and he talks about just this whole entire Sioux Falls area. He's probably planted what 75% of the trees in this community. Because it was a prairie so all the trees were brought in,' Kittelson said.
A team came together to help DeJong's vision come to life, including local nature photographer Paul Schiller who captured the moments now forever on paper. The book details not only trees, but other nature scenes throughout the four seasons.
'So we have truly a remarkable array of experiences if we so choose to take them. And I'm hopeful that this book will showcase exactly that direction for residents and visitors to say this is pretty special place. And it changes every 90 days,' Schiller said.
'It shows spring, summer, winter and fall all into one and four separate photos. So that's that's really eye catching too. But it's just a snapshot of just small piece of the whole puzzle in Sioux Falls,' DeJong said.
The community edition of the book will be sold for $20 with all proceeds benefiting the Mary Jo Wegner Arboretum. An open house for the book will be held at Touchmark at All Saints in Sioux Falls on Thursday starting at 4:30pm and goes until 6:30 p.m.
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