Upper Green Side

Help Us Find Homes for Trees

Share this item:

How can you place a price on something as beautiful and majestic as a tree in the midst of our urban environment? “Priceless” many would say about the trees out their doors and windows that have been constant companions over the years.

The Parks Department has a more precise answer as reported in the NY Times:

$122 million in annual benefits from the 592,130 of NYC’s street trees from higher real estate values to lower Summer cooling costs and of course the carbon that they sequester from the atmosphere. That’s over $200k per tree.

Another way that the Parks Department has calculated the value to the city is the Return On Investment of tree planting and maintance on city streets. The ROI is $5.60 per dollar spent on street trees.

With this staggering value per tree and ROI, Upper Green Side is stepping up it’s efforts to find empty tree beds - plots where trees could easily be planted immediately on city streets without cutting through concrete. Walking around the Upper East Side the other day I personally found 10 empty tree beds:
1. North side of CPS: Across from 40 West 59th Street
2. Northside of CPS: Across from 42 West 59th Street
3. 1160 Third Ave (West side of street between 67th and 68th)
4. 1164 Third Ave (West side of street between 67th and 68th) - large stump
5 & 6. 1202 3rd Avenue (West Side of street between 69th and 70th)
7 1282 Third Avenue (between 73rd and 74th Third Ave.
8.170 East 79th Street
9. South East corner of 81st and Lexington
10. South West corner of 80th and Lexington

We will work with local elected officials and the Parks Department to get these plots filled, but we need to find as many of these as possible.

Please send us any that you find to glenn uppergreenside com or leave a note in the comments section below.

Photo by Susan NYC