On April 18, 525 volunteers planted over 2,200 native tree seedlings on a former roadbed on Rutgers University’s Livingston Campus as part of a first-ever Tree Planting Festival led by Rutgers student and Maplewood resident Josh Kover, 22. The planting helped to establish a Miyawaki miniforest and served as a catalyst for the university’s Livingston Abandoned Roadway Environmental Restoration.
Kover said that attracting so many community members is an important part of fostering a culture of stewardship, paying the good deed forward.
“I have not known many students whose G.H. Cook honors project have made a difference on the land,” said Dr. Frank Gallagher, director of the Environmental Planning and Design program at Rutgers, on the University’s website. “Josh’s project will. His exploration of the Miyawaki method of afforestation is producing an experimental woodlot that can be used for both research and teaching on campus.”
Courtesy of Josh Kover.
Growing up in Maplewood, Kover was clearly soaking up the SOMA community’s green-minded ethos. He participated in gardening classes at the Morristown Arboretum from second to fifth grade. There was a gap in the time when he did not do much gardening. But while he was in high school at St. Peter’s Prep, Covid struck and quarantine. Being trapped in the house brought something out of him.
Kover got back into gardening and started doing work on his property and others. As a response to community complaints about the gas-powered lawn equipment (Maplewood banned gas-powered leaf blowers year-round effective January 2023; South Orange is now considering the same), Kover ultimately started his own all-electrical landscaping company in April 2021 — New Gen Garden.
Kover with New Gen Garden all-electric equipment.
Kover felt like he was in a position to not only help out, but also educate people on better practices. The business that he started at just age 18 grew quickly. At some points, he was doing landscaping for 15 clients a week while balancing other work and school. (Kover is an administrator for the Rutgers University Forestry Club, a member of the Rutgers Landscape Architecture Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, and a landscape architect intern for Rutgers Institutional Planning and Operations.)
Despite the workload, for Kover, it was all about being able to give back to his community.
“This idea that I’m talking about, of trying to create that culture of stewardship, build community, and whatnot. You have to do it from bottom up. You have to be involved. You have to actually know the people. You got to be involved in these smaller projects. I do it as a way to learn. I do it as a way to learn about people and what people know and don’t know. I find that very valuable,” said Kover.
Kover at the Tree Planting Festival, April 18, 2026.
This mindset is what led Kover to spearhead the Tree Planting Festival. With the help and support of the Rutgers faculty, Kover and Rutgers were able to get things into motion relatively quickly — an important factor with the semester winding down. Their work paid off as over 500 attendees were able to experience tree planting, as well as music, food and community.
Kover said it was imperative to get young people on board and excited about the work — to make sure the people attending felt the impact of the work they were doing. He achieved that goal: 60% of attendees, according to Kover, had never experienced planting a tree before.
Giving volunteers to opportunity to affect change was one of Kover’s main priorities.
“There’s all these global problems, there’s all these things that you witness all the time, and you cannot do anything about right? You’re bombarded constantly. It’s on your Instagram, you get notifications on your phone, you can’t get away from it. Here’s just an opportunity to make an actual, actionable change,” said Kover. 
But, said Kover, the Tree Planting Festival is just one step in a longer, larger fight against climate change.
Beyond correctly planting trees, he said education and resources are needed to care for them. Kover explains how creating a culture of stewardship in which people take a larger role is crucial for this. While Maplewood is in a good spot, Kover wants his community to be doing even more. And he wants to reach more communities.
“It’s about making this thing become accessible to somebody who wants to make change in their community and doesn’t have an avenue to do it,” said Kover. “It’s like bridging all of these gaps. That’s something we need to start thinking about and fighting out everywhere, it’s not just Maplewood.”
