The first of Shvat is the New Year for Trees. It was the cut-off date, the time you started to count the new year for trees, when the sap began to rise. In the Garden of Eden, there were two special trees: the Tree of Life, in the middle of the garden and the Tree of Knowledge, good and bad. I understand this as saying that humans and trees are both valuable and vulnerable. But the emphasis on trees in the Torah tells me that trees are more to Judaism than simple botanical phenomena.