Getting more trees on your block

When people in New York describe a block as "nice," what they often mean is that it has more street trees than speeding cars (whether they are conscious of the fact or not). Aside from the benefits Brooklynites usually associate with trees, trees have a decided traffic calming effect: drives travel slower on blocks that have them.

Since our block—and areas south and east of us—could use more trees, I passed info out to my neighbors on how to request a free tree in front of their houses. I made about 70 copies of the documents below and folded them into a flyer, which I placed in mailboxes of homes without trees on Fenimore, Hawthorne, Winthrop, and Parkside blocks from Flatbush to Nostrand Avenues. If anyone else would like to try this, here are the documents I made (along with the city form). Feel free to alter them anyway you see fit, but if you're outside of PLG, you may need to make sure to change the community board on the Letter to your own.

Letter to neighbors (doc)
Outside page (pdf)
Request_a_street_tree_form (pdf)
Community Board 9 address (cut-and-paste onto envelopes - for PLG and Crown Heights only)
Fold all of the above in half, and include an long envelope with your community board's address.

Though in the past it has taken well over a year for the city to plant requested trees, someone at the Parks Dept. told me that they're getting a big bag of money for more street trees as part of Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC.

Comments

[Xris (Flatbush Gardener)]

Thanks for posting this, and welcome to the blogging neighborhood!

MillionTreesNYC is the specific big initiative for planting new trees.

[Bob Marvin]

Great idea--the more trees the better--even the most tree-lined blocks in PLG could use more.

RE: your reference to "bags of money" from the Parks Sept., at the borough-wide Community Board briefings in Sept., a Parks Dept. representative told CB-9 members that there was so much money that even people who didn't request trees might be getting them. I think we should get our requests in before the politicians change their minds.