VALLEY AREA : Tree Plantings Scheduled Saturday

Tree-planting events will be held around the San Fernando Valley this weekend to celebrate Arbor Day and Earth Day.

The Valley Industry and Commerce Assn. will hold a tree-planting party from 9 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. todayat Lake Balboa Park in the Sepulveda Basin. VICA members will plant 250 trees as part of their Urban Forest Project. The program will include entertainment from an Andean music group, a picnic and statements from officials of the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

The Universal City-North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce will lay the groundwork today for a new tree nursery at North Hollywood High School. From 8:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m., volunteers, students and members of the chamber will prepare the school’s agricultural area for more than 900 trees that will arrive there over the next six weeks under the chamber’s urban forestry program, funded by a $50,000 grant from Texaco.

“The chamber has a plan over the next three years to plant 3,000 trees on public right of ways,” said Don Eitner, the chamber’s executive vice president. The young trees will be cared for by students until they are large enough to be planted on public rights of way, Eitner said.

Also today, the chamber will plant a mature cedar tree on the meridian at Colfax Avenue, Victory and Lankershim boulevards in North Hollywood, and a group of about 150 people will clean up trees along Lankershim Boulevard between Sherman Way and Hart Street.

“Volunteers are certainly welcome to participate,” Eitner said.