The City of Arlington Parks and Recreation Department was awarded the 2012 Gold Leaf Award, on November 21, 2012, by Courtney Blevin of the Texas Forest Service. The Gold Leaf Award is designed to recognize individuals, organizations, or municipalities for outstanding Arbor Day programs or community landscape projects that provide a significant impact to the community over the course of several years.

This specific award recognizes the department for its annual celebration of Arbor Day through Ecofest Arlington. Ecofest Arlington is an annual special event in Downtown Arlington that brings environmental education, classes, arts and crafts and entertainment together in one family friendly event. More than 3,400 trees have been provided to the community free of charge since the inception of the event in 2009. Instructions on how to plant and care for trees are provided at the event by the city Forestry department. Classes on native landscapes and water conservation are also offered during the event. Over 50 vendors are present providing resources environmentally friendly cleaning products, solar power, avenues to reuse and reface your current bathroom fixtures, how to landscape in a sustainable manner and much more. All vendors showcase products and services to help citizens reduce their impact on this earth.

The 2012 Texas Community Forestry Awards are co-sponsored by the Texas Chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture and the Texas Forest Service. The award is a beautiful signed and remarqued, limited edition framed print of a famous and historic Texas tree. This year's award painting will be of the Las Cuevas Ebony. The award was presented to Arlington at the 2012 Community Forestry Awards Luncheon on Thursday, September 27th at the 33rd Texas Tree Conference at the Waco Convention Center, Waco, Texas.

Left to right: Matt Churches, Heather Dowell, Arlington Mayor Robert Cluck, and Courtney Blevin.