Nine New Trees Make Their Way to Lower Manhattan as Part of MillionTreesNYC

Thanks to the Bloomberg administration’s ambitious MillionTreesNYC program, nine new trees can now call Lower Manhattan home. The New York City Department of Parks & Recreation planted these new trees across the neighborhood, bringing the total number of trees planted in Lower Manhattan through the MillionTreesNYC program to 24.

“Mayor Bloomberg’s tree-planting initiative and the efforts of Commissioner Benepe and the Parks Department are helping to green Lower Manhattan,” said Elizabeth H. Berger, President of the Downtown Alliance. “Ninety percent of Lower Manhattan’s workers take public transportation or walk to the office. More than ten million square feet of green office space is planned at the World Trade Center site. And our very walkable one square mile is filled with some of the best new parks in the city. Lower Manhattan is setting the standard for green central business districts.”

“MillionTreesNYC is pleased to plant new street trees in Lower Manhattan in partnership with the Downtown Alliance,” said Morgan Monaco, the Parks Department’s Director of MillionTreesNYC. “The new trees will clean the air, reduce stormwater runoff and beautify the neighborhood, and they are a wonderful complement to the Downtown Alliance’s Green Around Lower Manhattan initiative. MillionTreesNYC is proud to have the Downtown Alliance as a partner to help steward these new trees so that they can grow to be healthy, strong members of the community.”

In total, the Parks Department planted: 

• 5 ‘Bloodgood’ London Plane trees at 1 New York Plaza;
• 2 ‘Espresso’ Kentucky Coffee trees at 10 Hanover Square;
• 1 ‘Skyline’ Honeylocust tree at 25 Greenwich Street; and
• 1 ‘Skyline’ Honeylocust tree 33 Rector Street.

The Downtown Alliance-Parks partnership is part of the Alliance for Downtown New York’s Green Around Lower Manhattan initiative, a year-round series of community-greening events, including three park beautification events: Adopt A Geranium Day and Fall Community Planting Day in Bowling Green, and Spring Community Planting Day in Mannahatta Park. Together with the Department of Parks & Recreation and Department of Sanitation, the Downtown Alliance also holds a post-holiday “Mulch Mania,” where Lower Manhattan residents’ bring their holiday trees to be recycled into mulch for city parks.

Mayor Bloomberg recently celebrated the halfway mark of the MillionTreesNYC initiative by planting the 500,000th tree, a Pin Oak, at Saint Nicholas Park in Harlem. A public-private partnership between the City of New York and New York Restoration Project, MillionTreesNYC is planting and caring for one million new trees in the five boroughs by 2017.  Launched in October 2007, MillionTreesNYC is a key component of PlaNYC to create a healthier, more sustainable city.  MillionTreesNYC will ultimately expand the City’s urban forest by 20 percent, provide New Yorkers important health, economic and environmental benefits, and create a more sustainable urban environment.  

This past spring, the Parks Department planted eight honeylocusts in Lower Manhattan: three at 10 Hanover Square, three at 88 Pine Street, one at 126 Water Street and one at 130 Water Street. And in November 2010, the Parks Department planted eight trees in Lower Manhattan as part of MillionTreesNYC: two London Plane trees at 1 Battery Park Plaza; two Zelkovas at 10 Hanover Square; one at 36 Water Street; another at 105 Broad Street; and two American Lindens at 180 Water Street.