Photo by Deb Gau Members of the Marshall Sunrise Rotary helped fill in the dirt around a new tree at Allegiance Park on Tuesday afternoon. Rotary members planted about five new trees at the park, which will help replace existing trees damaged by emerald ash borer.

MARSHALL — Spring planting is starting to become a tradition for members of the Marshall Sunrise Rotary. For the second year in a row, Rotary members met up to plant several new trees at a Marshall park. This time, new trees went in at Allegiance Park, near the corner of Dublin Street and Rainbow Drive.

Sunrise Rotary President Dave Haen said the group’s goal was to make tree planting an annual activity.

“And it’s a way of giving back to the city,” Haen said.

April was a fitting time for the tree-planting project for a few different reasons. Haen said April is Environment Month for the Rotary. In addition, both Earth Day and Arbor Day are this week.

Marshall city staff dropped off about five young trees in the park on Tuesday morning, and helped dig holes for each one. Rotary members made sure the trees were standing straight in the holes, and filled in the dirt around them.

The purchase of the trees was made possible through a $1,000 donation from Sunrise Rotary.

Last year, Rotary members had also donated funds to plant a total of five new trees along a public trail near Loyalty Dog Park. This year, Marshall Parks Superintendent Preston Stensrud said, “They wanted to try a different park.”

Stensrud said he thought Allegiance Park was a good location to plant some additional trees. Many of the existing trees around the Allegiance Park playground were ash trees, some with definite signs of damage from emerald ash borer.

On Tuesday, Stensrud pointed out the rough holes on the trunks of a couple of ash trees in the park. The holes are made by woodpeckers trying to get at the ash borer beetle larvae under the tree bark, he said. Peeling back a piece of bark revealed S-shaped tunnels in the wood of the tree. The tunnels are made by emerald ash borer larvae, and they eventually kill the tree, he said.

The new plantings would help replace the ash trees in the park, Stensrud said. The new trees were a variety of different species, including linden, oak, locust, hackberry, and disease-resistant elm.