Why are the trees painted white in Santorini?
Why are the trees painted white in Santorini? It's called whitewash in English and even nowadays Greeks prefer this ecological way to fight insects that destroy the trunk and the fruit. In Greece, at Easter time everything gets whitewashed: the houses, the trees, the stone steps, the stone fences and anything that looks like it needs a bit of freshening up.
Why is Greece whitewashed?
In response to a 1938 cholera outbreak, the government ordered citizens to whitewash their homes in order to slow the spread of the disease. At the time, disinfectant cleaning products were not widely available in the islands, but they had plenty of whitewash.