By Bonnie Eissner
If the street trees that shade and beautify the Upper West Side could talk, they might thank Melissa Elstein. A co-founder of the West 80s Neighborhood Association, she has become one of their most loyal and active advocates.
About a decade ago, during New York’s campaign to plant a million trees, Elstein grew interested in street trees and their care. From her friend Kim Johnson, who had started Curb Allure, a business that makes tree guards, Elstein learned about the importance of street tree care. Motivated to know more, she enrolled in a tree steward training program with Trees New York.
“After that training, I was super inspired,” she said, “to preserve them and create a movement around the importance of street trees.” In 2015, Elstein, Johnson, and Elizabeth Ewell, the former business manager of Goddard Riverside’s Green Keepers, held their first Love Your Tree Day event.
This Tuesday, May 7, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. will be the seventh event, now named Love Your Street Tree Day. The fest in front of Goddard Riverside at Columbus Avenue and 88th Street will feature demonstrations of street tree bed and soil care. Participants can pick up free collapsible watering buckets, compost, mulch, and a ‘curb your dog’ sign. There will be coffee and baked goods, too.
The goal of Love Your Street Tree Day is to encourage community members to tend to their street trees. That includes watering them, which is especially important in the summer, removing litter, trying to prevent dog waste from entering the tree bed, adding either mulch or compost or both to the bed, and even planting flowers that don’t harm the tree.
New York City has around 700,000 street trees, which are managed by the Department of Parks and Recreation. But the department invites city residents to help care for this vast urban forest. It lists ways to protect and preserve trees on its website, and offers free tree stewardship events and training programs.
“There’s a really important reciprocal relationship between humans and trees, especially in our urban environment,” Elstein said. “I just think they’re so beautiful,” she added, and she and Johnson spoke with fervor about their environmental and social benefits.
In addition to shading streets, cleaning the air, feeding and sheltering birds, trees also absorb rainwater through their leaves and roots and can prevent it from flooding city sewers during storms. The overflow from New York’s sewers is discharged into the rivers and waterways that surround the city, Elstein pointed out.
Without care, the soil in tree beds becomes compacted, and the tree’s roots, most of which are just three inches below the surface, struggle to soak up water and air.
Trees aid the community, too. The parks department website cites studies that link street trees in urban areas with less graffiti and show that tree-lined retail areas attract customers.
“Planting these hardscapes really just softens the overall look of New York,” Johnson said.
With tending from Johnson and Elstein, and a new partner, Deborah Kaplan, Love Your Street Tree Day has grown. This year’s event has 15 sponsors, and recent events have drawn people from across the city.
“There are our regulars, for sure,” Johnson said, “but it always brings new and fresh faces.” She enjoys the camaraderie, she said, and added, “I know for a fact that we’ve made a difference.” She sees the curb your dog signs from her organization in tree beds around the Upper West Side and notices that the dog waste issue is not nearly as bad as it was a decade ago.
Elstein pointed to another positive outcome. Love Your Street Tree Day, a grassroots nonprofit organization, is now part of Forest for All NYC, a coalition of over 140 organizations that advocates for the millions of trees that make up New York’s urban forest. “We’ve just seen this movement grow,” Elstein said.
Kaplan, who is the director of employment and rehabilitation at Goddard Riverside and a board member of the West 80s Neighborhood Association, relishes meeting people who want to look after the trees on their block or in front of their building. “People work hard in New York,” she said, “and it’s just nice to see that people take the time to care about their community.”
Subscribe to West Side Rag’s FREE email newsletter here.
Thank you ladies! My grandmother was an honorary member of the National Shade Tree Organization in the 1960s. That’s when no women were in the organization! It was her passion: Temperance Guptill.
Is there a block association that includes 400 West End Avenue — the building on the NE corner of WEA and W. 79th Street — between W. 79th and W. 80th?
Thank you for the work to do- wonderful to look at and improves our health!
Thank you SO MUCH for this great organization and the work you do! Tending to our new tree and planting bulbs/annuals in the new tree pit in front of our building has been the most rewarding thing I’ve done in years. To have our efforts be so PUBLIC, enjoyed by so many, is insanely gratifying :). See you on the 7th!
There are so many wonderful volunteers who create some absolutely beautiful plantings and yet people let their dogs urinate and defecate all over them. For those dog owners who are apparently unable to recognize the beauty of these plantings and the damage that allowing dogs to piss all over them does, there are even signs asking to curb your dog yet people still allow their dogs to do this. Grab the leash pull it and curb your dog. Don’t allow them to use the trees, the middle of the sidewalk, buildings, bikes, cars etc. Curb your dog! Neighbors also need to speak up and say something when they see this behavior.
oddly, even our local dog care center have
dog walkers who allow dogs to destroy
our planting as well as residents on this
block! it’s crazy. literally!!
Anyone obnoxious enough to let their dog do this is going to be a nasty person. I don’t see any point in saying something. The dog is a proxy for the human being’s mental status. I’ve even seen some actually lift the dog over the gate and set them down inside it. Maybe I will take a photo, but even that invites abuse. So I’d probably stand back. We ought to collect these photos and post them somewhere. Ideas?
The Rag could start a weekly column, “Dog owners Hall of Fame,” and post the pictures and locations, so folks can “BOLO” them. Too direct?
An alternative Column suggestion: “Dog Owners’ Hall of SHAME.”
I never see anyone curb their dog anymore. The owners let them pee and poop in the middle of the sidewalk. They also let them do the same in tree beds even when there are beautiful flowers inside. Please owners, have a heart and Curb Your Dogs.
Yes. The degradation started happened during the summer of 2020.
Would love to do this but how to tackle a tree bed that is infested with rats and has dozens of rat burrows? There is a tree bed in front of our building on west 75th that has been destroyed by rat burrows and you cannot go near it, day or night, without at least 3-4 rats going in and out of them. We have notified the city, parks dept and elected officials and absolutely no response. Completely unsafe and unhygienic situation in addition to the destruction of the tree that is there.
I’ve been talking about this issue for years. Trees, while beautiful and nurturing, belong in a park and not on city sidewalks. They create under-ground highways for rodents; their roots displace/pop-up sidewalks; and at nighttime they prevent light from reaching the sidewalk making getting home at night unsafe. Visit 80th street (between B’way and Columbus) at night to see the hazard they create – over 45 trees in less than 1000 feet. Instead of trees, gardens would be nicer.
Yes, that is a common problem unfortunately but can definitely be resolved with persistence. It is important to eliminate food sources for rats by using garbage containers, instead of plastic bags, for garbage. The brown hard plastic compost bins for food scraps help too. Once you log a 311 rat complaint, it goes into the rat complaint portal. So check on the status of that complaint. The City should respond and treat the bed. But additionally, your building staff should be educated on best practices to eradicate the problem and prevent it from happening again. Your building can hire a professional exterminator and once the rats are eradicated, a special mesh (“excluder”) can go under the soil. That will prevent them from burrowing again if others come to the block. There are also companies that will install this for you, so that it is properly done without harming the tree. Making sure the other buildings on your block are also not creating food sources for the rats is also key. Community Board 7 hosts many community events for supers and neighbors on the rat issue. Contact them to find out when their next training is. I hope this helps!
Thank you for your response Melissa. Unfortunately it does not help because I have taken all the measures you have suggested for the past year. If you look up the rat portal you can see it’s been logged numerous times. An inspector comes out, identifies rat activity and an exterminator is sent to put poison down. This has made no difference in the past year. In fact things have gotten worse. This is a brownstone block so there is no “building staff”. The garbage are put in bins as is required by law. The issue is the burrows that are created so the rats have made it their home. They seek food elsewhere and come back to their home. The tree bed in front of 151 west 75th and the tree bed in between 161 and 159 (covered by construction) has been overtaken by them and they run back and forth between them all day and night. We have had to scare them away from our building doors on some days so that they don’t go inside our building. This rat czar or rat portal is doing nothing about actually closing up the tree beds to mitigate this. I have several emails back and forth and the only suggestion made to me is that I should take a class on fixing the tree bed. One can’t even come close to the tree bed because the rats run in and out of them at all hours. Any suggestions are welcome as the local politicians and groups for making us safe are completely neglecting us. A rat ran over my daughter’s foot last week as we left our building to go to school in the morning. So these posts are beautifying our tree beds are pointless if one can’t even walk near it.
Report it to 311 – there is section for evidence of rat activity. Either the city or the landlord will treat it for rats. Then you can put mulch and one of Mellissa’s great signs! We find that even mulch and a deter bad behavior like litter and dogs, though not completely!
Melissa and her group are inspiring and our group, The West 71st Street Block Association looks forward to continued collaborations!
The treatment should not be rat poison, which is dangerous for raptors (see; Flaco), but dry ice, which is inserted into the burrows, buried and kills rats in there. Garbage should be cleaned up, well, and not left in loose bags on the sidewalk, if possible. Folks who argue that their dogs will only “go” on grass or dirt should be told to take their dogs to the Park, but they MUST pick up the poop. OR better, retrain their dogs!
From what I’ve observed over the years while living on the UWS .. many dog-owners don’t ‘curb their dogs’! Do the younger pet owners even know what this expression means!!
It’s such a shame that people allow their pets to pee on the railings protecting the beautiful plants and trees within the ‘tree enclosures’..
Yes, that is a huge problem! It is hard to understand why some dog owners behave so irresponsibly, Please help us have pretty blocks!
I don’t own a dog, but it would be helpful to know how to get a dog who only pees/poops on grass or dirt, to use the sidewalk or the street. I don’t know how to get a dog to do that, and it looks like I’m not alone.
Just keep the leash short, and walk briskly to the curb. I know several dogs adopted during Covid that missed their first year of city training. They may try try to stop, or even have an accident between the door and the curb, but eventually they’ll get it and automatically take YOU to the curb. Don’t carry them. I’ve seen several people in my neighborhood yell and yank their dog’s leash, which teaches them nothing. After they pee at the curb give them a small training treat, and then take them for a nice walk in the park. : )
Thankful for trees.
But there has been a major increase in people letting their dogs pee/poop inside the tree protector – on flowers and trees.
(In particular, a thirtysomething guy on my block does this regularly. But not in front of his building – he goes to another building. Have seen people caution him – his response is not nice)
Really baffled that people proactively allow their dogs to do this?
What’s up?
Trees on my side of my street have been attacked by some company (evidently hired by the people who have put up scaffolding that stays and stays and stays). A truck came by and men jumped off and cut off branches that overhung the sidewalk. Lots of branches were collected and put in a following truck. Some of us have lost a good deal of shade and privacy with the loss of these branches. We are in a historical district (110th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam) but evidently trees are not protected. A great shame: some of the branch stubs left are not blooming this Spring. Whoever ordered the culling of living tree branches should face charges from the city- and the tenants deprived of shade, cooling air in the summer, and the beauty of trees.
Yes, they should. Can you find out the name of the contractor who put up the scaffolding, and who they hired to do this? This is patently illegal, unless it’s a City building and they have City permission. They are supposed to build the scaffolding around the trees, to accommodate the branches as much as possible.
What a great article! Thank you Bonnie Eisner and the hard work of Love Your Street Tree Day folks as well as everyone under the umbrella of Forest for All NYC. During the summer I definitely choose the shady side of the street! Our trees are so important!
Loveeee this!! More trees and plants on the upper west side!! Let’s invest in riverside park (south). It’s great for real estate value too!!
I think that the vast majority of people do not know what “curb your dog” means. It means take your dog OFF the sidewalk and have them pee and poop in the actual street between parked cars where the street cleaning machine can then scoop it up or at least the rain flowing through the gutters cleans things a bit. . I think most people thing “curb your dog” simply means ‘don’t poop in the middle of the sidewalk.’