Plant a tree in your backyard.

“Planting a new tree in my yard was one of the first things I wanted to do after buying my home. It’s a great house and all, but my backyard landscape was pretty barren — a bunch of grass and not one tree! While I’m fixing that problem by planting new shrubs and flowers, my backyard still needed a new tree to anchor the landscape. [...] I paid $200 for my new, 15-foot-tall elm tree that was planted in a 30-gallon pot. I could’ve brought it home myself from the nursery. But the thing about trees? They’re big… very big! And a 30-gallon pot is mighty heavy. Good luck getting it into your sedan if you have one. I would’ve needed more than luck to get it into mine — I would’ve needed a trailer.”

“When I first moved into my current house over 20 years ago, I was keen to add height and structure to my long back yard, which had only enjoyed the very barest of planting. And it seemed a good idea to plant one of my favorite trees at the far end. I’d planted a eucalyptus tree, and this evergreen beauty looked perfectly innocent to start with, but it just kept growing and growing.”