It makes perfect sense that professional landscapers would celebrate Earth Day.

After all, landscapers are all about protecting the environment.

Planting trees and shrubs and flowers is not just a fad with these folks. It’s their lives.

And it makes perfect sense that landscapers, under the leadership of PLANET — the Professional Landcare Network — decided to launch a National Day of Service on Earth Day.

What better day to promote their profession, to reach out and remind everyone there are plenty of certified professional landscapers out there who care about their communities and their customers.

After all, we’ve all heard stories — I’ve written a few myself — about crooks claiming to be landscapers who take half your downpayment and disappear.

In our area on Friday, professional landscapers from around the Pikes Peak region will be volunteering their time and using donated materials to build a healing garden at Memorial Hospital for Children on Boulder Street east of downtown Colorado Springs.

If you have any doubts about the sincerity of these landscapers and their commitment to this day of service, consider this:

They are taking on a project that the hospital had budgeted $100,000 to complete.

And they will be moving all the materials — 50 tons of dirt, 5 tons of sand, 24 tons of sand/gravel roadbase, 2.5 tons of drainage rock, and uncounted tons of flagstone, boulders, pavers, trees and shrubs — by wheelbarrow to the site.

It will take volunteers a day just to haul all the stuff the length of a football field down a narrow ramp to reach the place they will build the healing garden.

I’d say that qualifies as a true day of service for these members of the Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado.

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Here’s a look at the $110 million Memorial Hospital for Children on Boulder Street. The seven-story east tower opened at Memorial Health Systems’ downtown campus in December 2007.

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Volunteers from the Associated Landscape Contractors of Colorado's southern chapter will build a healing garden using donated materials on Earth Day, April 22, 2011, at the base of the Memorial Hospital for Children east tower. The garden will be built behind the retaining wall and railing.

The garden will feature three large circular patios, a fountain, benches and tables and a variety of plants.

The patios represent hope, life and healing. The area will be a retreat for children and their families as well as Memorial employees.

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