A man passed by him while he was planting a sapling in Damascus and said to him, "Do you do this when you are a companion of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ?"He replied, "Do not be hasty with me. I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ say, 'Whoever plants a sapling, no human being or any of Allah's creatures eats from it without it being counted as charity for him.'"
أن رجلا مر به وهو يغرس غرسا بدمشق، فقال له: أتفعل هذا وأنت صاحب رسول الله ﷺ؟ فقال: لا تعجل علي، سمعت رسول الله ﷺ يقول: من غرس غرسا لم يأكل منه آدمي ولا خلق من خلق الله-عز وجل- إلا كان له صدقة.
Ahmad (27506) narrated it from Ali bin Bahr, who said, Baqiyyah narrated to us, he said, Thabit bin Ajlan narrated to me, he said, Qasim, the freed slave of Banu Yazid, narrated to me, from Abu Darda, and he mentioned it.Its chain of transmission is hasan due to what has been said about Baqiyyah, who is Ibn Walid. He practices tadlis al-taswiyah, except that he explicitly stated "narrated to me" at both levels. The majority hold that if he explicitly states this at the relevant level, the charge of tadlis is removed from him.On this subject there are also narrations from Muaz bin Anas, from a man among the companions of the Prophet ﷺ, and from Abu Ayub, but all of them are daif. The sahih one among them is the one I have mentioned.