Let’s take a moment to sing praises to the art of urban tree planting.

Students at the Wilkes-Barre Area Career and Technical Center got some solid lessons on the topic Monday when urban forester Vinnie Cotrone showed up with tools, trees and a posse of other experts to help improve the parking lot with 13 young trees.

Start with the actually digging. Even before the horticulture students emerged from the building into the chill morning air, Cotrone was busy digging a demonstration hole using a shovel and pick axe. Obviously, the fairly shallow hole could have been done in a matter of minutes with a properly-sized back hoe, but Cotrone explained why that’s a no-no in an older development where there are no definitive maps showing where and how deep utilities might be buried.

Odds were h

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