Rooted in place, shaped by community, and centering care, Tree Care celebrates and expands the community of care between urban trees and their human neighbors in Hyde Park through a series of community gatherings, textiles, and sculpture.
Find out about the trees that live among us, how they care for us and how we can care for them, about the community organizations working to preserve and plant trees, and how you can join in with this project.
The Trees of Hyde Park
Maple, oak, black cherry, birch, elm, crab apple, and willow—the urban trees of Hyde Park are our neighbors. Tree Care Hyde Park shines a spotlight on the trees around us through 1000 colorful, plant-dyed textile tree tags printed with ink made from the trees.
Tree Care Hyde Park aligns with the aim of the City of Boston Urban Forest Planwith the aim of sharing the power of urban trees to improve air quality, provide wildlife habitat, reduce heat and mitigate the adverse health impacts of heat, reduce stormwater flooding, lower energy bills, capture carbon, and create an urban community that is joyful, peaceful, and beautiful.
The text on the tags invite us into multi-sensory actions with the tree that help us to know how the trees feel, act, relate, and live. As we perform those invitations, we find the tree’s ways of being inside ourselves and our communities.
Do you want to find out more about a tree you found on your walk? Check out the tree care information here.
Tree Care Sites in Hyde Park
Tree Care Hyde Park tags trees in sites around the neighborhood that community organizations and the city are protecting, preserving, and caring for. These include urban wilds (existing and hoped for), a community land trust, city parks, contested microforests, and more. This network of urban landscapes have been or are in the process of being advocated for, cared for, and conserved by local community organizations in Hyde Park, such as the SouthWest Boston CDC Green Team, Keep Hyde Park Beautiful, The Neponset River Association, and more. Wander through the map to find landscapes and trees that are on your way to work, where you can walk your dog, or where you can simply be in a peaceful, protected natural habitat.
Join
click on link to go to events page
9/17 Thursday opening at Library 5:30-7:30
9/23 Wednesday Tree Care Symposium??
9/25, Friday TBA community group Tree Care Printing Workshop, open to public event at site, evening
10/1, Thursday, Hyde Park Neighborhood Association, 6-8pm
10/3, Saturday, TBA open to public Tree Care Printing Workshop, at site
Late October, TBA community group Tree Care Printing Workshop
Tree Care Hyde Park includes a series of public programs and workshops open to the community along with a mobile printing/planting press—together this work will invite community authorship into the project inspiring Hyde Park residents to understand and advocate for the vital role trees play in urban communities.
Workshops: During the workshops, community members are invited to hum, breathe, move, whisper, and dream with the trees, to write invitations to the trees to join us in our everyday lives and our dreamd about what trees are and hope for. We will choose some short phrases to print on the textile tree tags using the Tree Care Printing/Planting Press. Community members can choose to take the tags and hang them on trees in their yard, neighborhood, or park.
Tree planting: Join Tree Care Hyde Park in planting trees in our parks and neighborhoods, particularly in low canopy neighborhoods, find out how to get trees planted in your yard, or receive a free tree in a Tree Giveaway with Tree Boston and Keep Hyde Park Beautiful.
Why Hyde Park?
Hyde Park is losing tree canopy faster than any other neighborhood in Boston due to lower planting rates, development, and aging trees. Though the 9.1 acres have a number of green spaces including Stonybrook Reservation and The Neponset River, it is home to a number of environmental justice neighborhoods with low tree canopy. Tree Care Hyde Park shines a light on the work of local community organizations that are working to plant, preserve, and conserve trees, with the aim of drawing more support for that work and fostering love for trees to counter the decreasing tree canopy.
The 1000 tree tags will be hung on trees throughout Hyde Park in areas such as urban wilds (existing and hoped for) and parks, but also in community member’s yards and street trees. Events held at these sites will help the community to get to know these protected and advocated for ecologies.
The Hyde Park Library is the hub of Tree Care, hosting the Wheelbarrow Printing/Planting Press and a project map with information about the trees, sites and community partners. When a community member takes a tree tag to hang on their own tree, they leave information so the project map can be updated with the tagged trees of the project.
an image of a street with few trees, where I draw in trees…?
About the trees
About the sites
About the community organizations
Tree Inks
Scores
About the project