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Saxonburg Cub Scouts plant trees at Winfield park for Earth Day

David Bauer, left, digs a hole as Nicholas Houghton holds a tree to be planted during a tree-planting event for Earth Day in Winfield Township on Wednesday, April 22, 2026. Rob McGraw/Butler Eagle

WINFIELD TWP — A group of Cub Scouts from Saxonburg’s Pack 51 spent their Earth Day planting dozens of trees at Winfield Township’s Community Park.

“It’s a good day to bring everybody together and think about the planet that we live on and taking care of it,” said Cubmaster Brian Kundrod. “We have to take care of the planet where we live and provide for future generations. And that’s something that we really need to teach the kids. We have nowhere else to go. This is where our home is.”

More than two dozen Scouts from the troop planted four quaking aspen trees and 25 Fraser fir trees throughout the park Wednesday, April 22. Kundrod said the Scouts received the ready-to-plant trees from Neighborhood Forest, a nonprofit which gives out free trees to children and other organizations to plant on Earth Day.

“We reached out to Winfield Park to figure out if we could have a place to plant the trees, and they said that they would,” Kundrod said. “It would help them as well as help us. They could have more trees, and they give us a place to plant our trees.”

Nolan Benninger runs dirt to a tree during a tree-planting event for Earth Day in Winfield Township on Wednesday, April 22, 2026. Rob McGraw/Butler Eagle

“The Cub Scout pack reached out if we had any projects, and they said they had trees to plant,” said Winfield Township Supervisor Matthew Klabnik, who was on hand as a volunteer Wednesday evening. “Because our park is nature-focused, we’re like, ‘absolutely, we’ll take the trees.’ And projects like this, when we go out for grants from DCNR (Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources), they look really good when you say we have community involvement, and we have groups that are coming out and doing things like this.”

Nate Schmidt jumps up and down on the shovel during a tree-planting event for Earth Day in Winfield Township on Wednesday, April 22, 2026. Rob McGraw/Butler Eagle

This won’t be the only Scout-related activity planned for the community park. The township is hoping to incorporate a series of Eagle Scout projects into the park — including a disc golf course and a storybook trail — as part of the park’s planned expansion.

“I think Winfield is getting a reputation as being friendly to Scout projects,” Klabnik said.

The tree planting isn’t all that the Scouts from Pack 51 will be doing this week.

“On Sunday, we’re actually doing a garbage pickup on Knoch Road,” Kundrod said. “We adopted Knoch Road, and we do pickups twice a year. It’s a service project we do.”

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