Sunday, June 29, 2014
Queens loses a lot of new street trees every year
Courtesy of WNYC.
Bear in mind that the landscape contractors that are hired and paid the $1450 per tree by the City to install street trees - are required to water and care for those trees under a 24-mos. warranty.
Tree watering is the most important event in the life of the newly installed tree especially during the period of establishment. Yet, since 2007 NYC Parks Forestry has been unwilling to effectively enforce the watering requirement and/or generate an alternate incentive that would motivate the paid landscaper to go out and irrigate those street trees on a weekly basis (for the duration of the growing seasons).
Instead, guilt is placed unfairly upon the public who already paid for the tree, its installation, its multi-year care - and a contractor is left off the hook.
Carsten Glaeser
10 comments:
What did you think? Parks couldn't care less about trees. A contractor plants them and the Parks Dept just sits and watches them die. No intervention whatsoever! Just look at the crappy condition of our parks.
A lot of new people in Flooshing don't maintain their property.
They buy houses and exist solely within them - you're lucky they mow their lawns once every 4 weeks. A lot of houses are rentals now and that spells the death of any maintenance on the property - including the house!
Almost every new tree in the neighborhood is dead - it's really sad.
And Jamaica is spending money to plant new trees. They do not take care of the trees they have here, but want to waste more tax payers money to plant more.
What kind of logic is this?
Ever see some of the trees that the city is planting? Awful half dead non-native species that attract bugs and literally smell when they flower.
The city should bring back the London Plane trees but won't.
In it's flora diversity plan the city has ceased planting these hearty pollution resistant specimens because they make up over 10% of existing city trees.
Incredible.
What do you expect? So many people go from their homes to their car in their off street parking spot to the valet parking in front of the restaurant, or the parking lot at work, or every now and then at a park. They never go outside other than that. They never use the sidewalks. They never spend time in the public realm outside their metal bubble. Why would they care if the trees on their block need to be watered? How would they even know?
The point is that people aren't supposed to be responsible for watering trees because the city has contracts with companies to do so.
Crappy, Those tree contracts run for 2 years only. After that, the trees are on their own.
Yes, and the article is about the 2-year mortality rate of new trees and telling people that they should be the ones to water it during that time when there are contractors obligated to do so.
I have never ONCE seen a crew come back and water a tree. never.
The city should fine any agency hired and have not completed their work, instead of stealing money from citizens for pointless tickets and meters!
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