Since 2009, Irmo has maintained its recognition as a Tree City USA Community.

IRMO, S.C. — In 2009, the Town of Irmo was recognized as a Tree City USA and every year since then, they have maintained this prestigious recognition. We talked to the director of Public Works Whitt Cline a little bit about what this means for the Town of Irmo.

“Tree City recognition, you’ve got to do a few things. You’ve got to have a urban forestry department, which we have," Cline explains "You’ve got to do an arbor day presentation every year, you’ve got to do an arbor day proclamation every year and you’ve got to do some tree planning and tree maintenance.”

Since the Town of Irmo meets all of these standards set by the Arbor Day Foundation, they join over 3,400 cities and towns across America committed to being a recognized tree city.

There are also great environmental benefits to having trees planted as well. Especially street trees.

“Street trees are your most beneficial trees for towns and cities," Cline told us, "They clean the water, they clean the air. Every time it rains hard, they help with storm water erosion and soak up a lot of the rain water that you get especially heavy rain events. So, it really benefits the city having all of these trees, plus it gives everybody some community pride which is probably the most important portion of Tree City USA is having community pride.”

“We take a lot of pride in it. Town Council takes a lot of pride in it. When I came to work here 20 years ago we only had about two dozen trees and now we have almost 4,000 trees. So, we’ve done a lot of tree planting and everybody now, when they come into Irmo, they take pride in the way it looks. We’ve always had great places, great neighborhoods, great schools, and now we’ve got the trees and the parks and stuff to go along with it," Cline told us proudly.

There are 271 cities and towns in the state of South Carolina and Irmo is one of 33 that made the list of tree city communities. Way to go Irmo!!