Saluting Branches brings professional arborists to veteran cemeteries across the country for a pro-bono day of tree care.
One of the more meaningful days on the Tree Awareness calendar is the Saluting Branches day of service. The organization coordinates professional tree care companies across the country to provide pro-bono arboriculture work at national and state veteran cemeteries — pruning, deadwood removal, structural assessment, the kind of professional-grade tree care that keeps the canopy at our country’s veteran burial grounds dignified and safe.
View from the Field · Saluting Branches Day of Service · Tree Awareness
“It was an honor to serve alongside the Saluting Branches organization for a day dedicated to providing tree services at our nation’s veteran cemeteries. Giving back in this way is a small gesture of gratitude for the immense sacrifices made by our servicemen and women. Being part of this meaningful day not only allowed us to improve the grounds where our heroes rest, but also reminded us of the deep respect and appreciation they deserve.”Tree Awareness Crew · Saluting Branches Day of Service
Saluting Branches: Arborists United for Veteran Remembrance is a nonprofit organization that mobilizes the professional tree-care industry to provide one full day of pro-bono service at veteran cemeteries across the United States. The work is performed entirely by volunteer arborists, ground crews, and equipment operators — the same professionals who would be on a paying job site any other day of the year.
The annual day of service began in 2015. Since then, hundreds of tree-care companies have participated, providing thousands of hours of arboricultural care at cemeteries that would otherwise depend on limited municipal or federal maintenance budgets.
Structural pruning. Heritage trees in a veteran cemetery have decades of accumulated maintenance needs — deadwood, defective unions, overextended limbs over headstones. Selective pruning to ANSI A300 standards.
Risk assessment. TRAQ-qualified visual evaluation of the trees on the grounds. Identification of trees that need follow-up beyond the day’s window.
Deadwood removal. The maintenance work that often gets deferred when budgets are tight. Aerial deadwooding on trees over visitor zones is high-value work that the day-of service can knock out at scale.
Cabling and bracing where appropriate. On heritage specimens with structural defects, support systems extend the safe service life and preserve the canopy character of the cemetery for the long term.
The honest reason: it’s the right thing to do. The men and women buried in the cemeteries we serve made sacrifices that no amount of arboriculture can repay. Spending one day a year doing the work we’re trained to do, on the property where they rest, is a small gesture toward an immense debt.
The professional reason layers on top: the day is also a meaningful learning experience for younger crew members. Working alongside other professional crews, on a property with significant arboriculture needs, on volunteer time without the pressure of billable hours — it’s a teaching environment that’s hard to replicate any other way.
Arboriculture is, at its best, a service trade in the older sense of the word. We work on trees that long outlive us, on properties whose stewardship spans generations. Spending one day at a veteran cemetery is a way of remembering whose stewardship made the work possible in the first place.
To the servicemen and women whose sacrifices made it possible for us to be there: thank you.
