Help Protect a Tompkins Square Park Ginkgo Tree!
How you can help add a new tree guard in TSP, why tree guards matter, and how Parks procurement works
I’m reposting this article that Zachary Thomas (Friends of NYC Abundance) and I wrote and published over on his Substack. If you are interested in helping us protect a tree in Tompkins Square Park, please visit our fundraiser page here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-protect-a-tree-in-tompkins-square-park.
For more context on why tree guards matter, why we chose this particular tree to protect, and what our experience procuring a tree guard from NYC Parks has been like, read on below!
Hi friends,
Tal (of NYCuriousity) and I are raising money for a metal tree guard to protect a vulnerable tree on the perimeter of Tompkins Square Park. We serve together on the Parks Committee of Manhattan Community Board 3, which covers the park.
We deeply appreciate donations of any size. We also want to keep you all posted on how this tree guard protects our city’s investment in its canopy—and what we learn about working with NYC Parks Tree Time to get it installed.
Why Tree Guards Actually Matter
You might wonder: what’s the big deal with tree guards? If you live in New York City, you probably walked past a dozen of them today without a second thought. They are the short metal fences that surround a tree bed.
It turns out they are surprisingly important.
Tree guards shield trees from vehicles and dog waste. They protect our investment in new and younger trees. Depending on the design, they can even add public seating. That is always a plus for making a park more human-centric.
It is a fairly niche topic, so I wrote a whole post last year on why they matter. Check it out here:
Why we chose metal over wood or wire
As I mentioned in that previous post, we could have added a wooden tree guard. It would have a lower upfront cost than a metal one.
But we worried about rust, weather, and physical trauma. A wooden guard would likely need repairs or replacement far sooner. Over a timeline of years, we think a metal guard is the better value investment.
That doesn’t mean non-metal tree guards don’t work. In fact, I recently saw a simple wire guard appear on a tree on the Avenue A side of the park. As you can see, it is already a little bent out of shape, but as long as there is ongoing ownership and maintenance of it, it will be helpful.
All that said, we’re excited to add a piece of park infrastructure that will last for years at Tompkins Square Park.
Why we picked this specific tree
I wish high-quality tree guards were cheaper so we didn’t have to choose just one! We picked this specific tree based on a few factors:
Foot and vehicle traffic: According to Google Maps, E 7th Street sees traffic more often than other streets surrounding TSP. Trees on high-traffic streets need guards to protect against small vehicle traffic and dogs. In this case, the tree sits right in front of a Citi Bike station, so people bike and walk by it constantly.
Trunk diameter: Ginkgo trees have slender trunks. A hit from a bike or constant exposure to dog urine is more dangerous to them than to a tree with a massive trunk.
Disease resistance: Ginkgos are famously hardy against disease and pests. Some have lived for thousands of years in the wild. If a Ginkgo dies here, it is likely due to a specific New York City cause: physical trauma or dogs.
The “carpet of gold”: Ginkgo trees drop a beautiful “carpet of gold” in the fall. We’d love to photograph and share images of this tree and its new guard throughout the year as part of this project. The leaves definitely catch the eye!
Expert input: We consulted with the NYC Parks managers for Tompkins Square Park and the Friends of Tompkins Square Park. We wanted to ensure this tree was a great candidate and that a guard wasn’t already in the works.
What is Tree Time?
Tree Time is the NYC Park Department’s program for allowing individuals or private actors to play a part in “the installation of tree guards, tree planting, and sidewalk repair”.
Anyone can fill out a tree guard inquiry form where they provide information on the location and characteristics of the tree and associated tree bed, the type of tree guard desired, and whether additional work will be needed to clean up the tree bid or surrounding sidewalk. Filling this form out required me to visit our chosen ginkgo tree with a tape measurer and get measurements of the tree bed (length and width).
About two weeks after submitting the tree guard inquiry form, expect to receive an email from someone at NYC Parks Tree Time with an acknowledgement of your request and a quote for the cost. All that’s left to do then is to provide the funds in the form of a check in the mail or online. Once the funds are received, Tree Time estimates the tree guard will be installed within 12 weeks. More good news: the donation is 100% tax deductible!
Submitting the form is easy enough. NYC Parks also provides a handy table that estimates the required donation for the tree guard to be anywhere between $940 to $1,710, depending on the style of tree guard requested. However, if additional work is needed, such as the removal of belgian blocks from the tree bed or sidewalk repair, the requested amount can be higher.
Because our chosen tree had Belgian blocks, and because we requested a style of tree guard that matched the other existing guards in Tompkins Square Park, our total donation was quoted at $1,950.
Our Experience with Parks Procurement
Tal and I had a head start on beginning the procurement process for our tree guard thanks to our awareness of the tree time program and contacts in the NYC Parks Department through our roles as Parks Committee members on our community board. Despite this early boost, it still took several weeks of back-and-forth emailing and asking around to figure out if our chosen tree was eligible for a tree guard and if there were already any ongoing efforts or possibilities for getting tree guard funding from the City.
Who we contacted about our tree guard proposal, in order:
NYC Parks District 3 Manager: confirmed our chosen tree was an eligible candidate for a tree guard
NYC Parks Manhattan Region Manager: connected us to someone at Tree Time to discuss raising the funds for a tree guard
NYC Parks, Environment and Planning, Tree Time Municipal Forestry Technician: Acknowledgement of our tree guard request and provided us the form to complete to submit the funding for the tree guard
In between, we also talked to contacts at Friends of Tompkins Square Park and on the Manhattan Community Board 3 Parks Committee to ensure we were following proper procedure and that there was no alternative method for getting the tree guard funded. These contacts were immensely helpful in directing us toward the right people and confirming there were no other ongoing efforts to get a tree guard installed for our chosen tree. Things might have moved faster if we went straight to the Tree Time form, but it was our first time doing this and we wanted to be sure we weren’t wasting our efforts.
In each step of the process, there was typically a two to three week delay in responses. We don’t blame the NYC Parks contacts for this - certainly, investigating whether a single tree is eligible for a tree guard is low on the list of priorities for someone managing tens of thousands of trees across dozens of parks and more. And certainly more funding for NYC Parks would help bring response times down. But it does show the lengths an individual citizen must go in order to procure a tree guard from NYC Parks themselves.
First, one must navigate a web of government websites and forms without a clear direction on the correct order of operations or knowledge of whether a tree guard is being (or can be) funded by another entity. Then, one must wait a minimum of 10 business days (if skipping straight to submitting the Tree Time form) or longer (if attempting other procurement routes) to learn if a tree guard is possible at all. Lastly, one must actually raise the funds for the tree guard - in our case, $1,950 to cover the cost of the permit, removing belgian blocks from the tree pit, and installing the tree guard.
If any of the above has resonated with you, or you also care about protecting NYC’s trees, please check out our fundraiser at the link below! Stay tuned for more updates.
Thanks for doing your part to make this City a great place to live! Interesting to see the actual back-and-forth required to (hopefully) achieve this outcome.
Thanks for the post! It’s very interesting to hear about the actual mechanics of City agencies and how they interface with New Yorkers.