by Carla Caruso
If you’ve ever wanted to chat with a tree, you might soon have a real chance.
APA member Valdis Dunis has approached the Adelaide City Council and Lord Mayor Sandy Verschoor about replicating Melbourne’s ‘email a tree’ initiative.
In 2013, Melbourne’s city council created an interactive urban forest map, providing individual data on each of the 70,000 trees lining its streets and parks.
APA member Valdis Dunis hopes we’ll soon be able to send love letters to our most eye-catching trees.
Each tree was given an identification number, allowing people to also email it via the map. The idea was that people would easily be able to report fallen branches or any tree damage or ill health, with staff fielding the messages - and the greenery ‘replying’.
But an unexpected albeit positive consequence has been people from all over the world writing love letters to the trees - plus, the odd existential query and bad pun. (Read some of the cute messages here or watch this video on how it all works.)
The program is quite active.
Red Gum Park / Karrawirra (Park 12) has an abundance of trees.
Valdis, who works in clean energy by day, recalls: “It became a media story because some trees were really loved by the community, and so, they would basically get messages saying, ‘How beautiful you are’ and ‘I love you’, and they had fan clubs for some of the trees.
“It gave each tree a personality or a sort of identity. It’s not so much adopting a tree, but it’s basically giving each tree a bit of uniqueness and you can actually tag onto it and help it out.
“They’re not anonymous, they’re not all the same. Some trees are really eye-catching and magnificent.”
Some of the greenery in Red Gum Park / Karrawirra.
Valdis doesn’t think it would be difficult to set up a similar system here. “You could just do a Google Maps image of the Park Lands and say, ‘Hey, computer, take every tree and give it a number.’ It can probably be done fairly automatically.
“[Adelaide] Botanic Garden usually has a tag and some sort of description on most of their trees.
“So, it’s probably a dog tag or something on the tree, like ‘Tree number 75, talk to me.’ You’d probably have a description of the tree, how old it is, things like that, which always makes it interesting.
“We’ve got thousands of trees, so it’s not something you could do overnight. But it’s a cute idea, especially when people become very personal with the trees… It’ll make people smile [if] we do get it done.”
Fancy emailing this tree?
Valdis is an APA ambassador of North Adelaide’s Lefevre Park / Nantu Wama (Park 6), leading guided walks there every year.
On trees he favours, he says: “The bigger, the grander, the older, the better. I took some photographs recently of this one Moreton Bay fig tree and the roots just keep on going and going. It was almost outer space-like.”
Melbourne’s urban forest strategy kicked off in 2007 in response to a decade-long drought across southern Australia. By 2040, the city aims to double the area, covered by tree canopy, to reduce the ‘heat island’ effect.
This Moreton Bay fig tree in Park 12 is one of Valdis’s favourites.
Photos: James Elsby.
