This month, NYRP and the NYC Parks Department hit a big milestone with the MillionTreesNYC initiative. On October 18, NYRP joined Mayor Bloomberg, the NYC Parks Department, and MillionTreesNYC lead sponsors Toyota and BNP Paribas to plant the 500,000th tree in St. Nicholas Park in Harlem, marking the halfway point in the effort to plant one million new trees around New York City. During this fall, MillionTreesNYC has worked with the community to plant trees through a variety of large- and small-scale volunteer planting days.
October’s series of volunteer planting days kicked off on the 1st, with American Express-sponsored “Serve2gether,” a Saturday devoted to planting trees in the Bronx’s Co-op City. With over 200 community volunteers, we successfully planted 291 trees that day. On October 11, NYRP continued its MillionTreesNYC planting efforts at Pomonok Houses in Queens, sponsored by Alcoa Foundation. Volunteers from Alcoa, City Year, Trees New York, the Harvey Milk School and NYCHA residents worked together to plant 145 new trees across the Pomonok Houses campus. On October 22, NYRP and the NYC Parks Department held several large-scale reforestation days across New York City in all five boroughs, engaging close to 1,000 New York volunteers in our greening efforts and planting over 21,600 trees.
MillionTreesNYC is a public-private partnership between Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s PlaNYC sustainability initiative, the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation and New York Restoration Project.