Elbow Beach Hotel is marking its 100th anniversary with a gift to the future generations of Bermuda.

The hotel is matching each year of its operation with a Cedar tree sapling, to help restore the indigenous tree to its former abundance.

Tomorrow, general manager Frank Stocek will present the Bermuda National Trust and Bermuda Zoological Society each with 50 saplings to plant across the Island at their discretion. The saplings represent a special Christmas gift to two of the guardians of Bermuda's beauty.

"As Elbow Beach's 100th year of hospitality comes to a close, we wanted to give something back to the community that has supported us for 100 years, while paying tribute to the environmental history of the Island," said Mr. Stocek.

The Mandarin Oriental hotel will also plant two cedar saplings on its own grounds, with plaques to mark Elbow Beach's 100-year milestone.

Zeudi Hinds, the hotel's director of communications, said: "Cedar trees were plentiful when this hotel was built, so we thought what better way to contribute to the Island's next 100 years and its future environmental health than to provide trees for planting to these commendable green-oriented organisations."

Bermuda Cedar is known for its heavy, sweet aroma and reddish timber. It has played a significant role in the Island's history and settlers' early homes.

Forests of Bermuda Cedar used to flourish throughout the islands but in the 1940s, two species of scale insects introduced accidentally from the US, left them decimated.

By 1978, some 99 percent of Bermuda's junipers some eight million trees, had been destroyed.