When Your Tree Becomes a Big Garbage Can

One of the joys of city living is taking a nice walk under the tree lined streets and admiring the gardening of others.  While Philadelphia tends to be pretty tree lined, my neighborhood, Fishtown, is not so idyllic looking.  Instead, on a lot of blocks like mine, it looks like a concrete jungle.

Some awesome groups and individuals like the Philly Tree Tenders and Philly Tree People have taken it upon themselves to see to it that we plant more trees in our neighborhoods.  When the opportunity to plant a tree presented itself, I jumped on the opportunity.  Through Philly Tree People, I was able to pay around $30 for a square of concrete to be torn up, the area mulched and a tree planted.  Please note if you're in Philadelphia that applications are being taken now for Spring 2011 and donations are always accepted!

Anyway, my tree got planted about 3 years ago in the Spring.  The mulch was beautiful.  The tree was anchored.  It was just lovely...until about a day later when I realized that my tree was actually a new garbage can for the neighborhood.  The tree stood with its two wooden anchors, its green rope, its lovely mulch...and it received dog pee, cat poop, dog poop, wrappers, losing lottery tickets, cigarette butts, used condoms...you name it.

The first year I had my tree, I sort of regretted the grand idea to ever get one.  In the city, sometimes we can admit we can feel easily defeated when the first kid decides to grab a chunk of our pansies out of our barrel planters or steals our small planter.  It's easy to just give up.

And for a while, I did just give up.

At the end of Season 1, I was visiting my hometown of Rochester where my mom plucked three Hostas out of her garden and handed them to me.  She said, "Here, just stick these in the ground and they'll multiply."  I told her I don't have a green thumb...I don't have grass where the dogs can't pee.  But they were free and they were plucked and came with the promise I couldn't kill them so I figured I had to find a use for them.

Alas: they became the first plants to surround my new, baby tree.  I indeed just stuck them in the ground.  Winter came, more poop came but snow washed away the trash and poop of yesteryear. 

In the Spring, the Hostas rose from the ground and populated.  I quickly went to Home Depot and got iron pieces of interlocking fence and put them around the concrete square.  Though not a perfect size, they'd shield the tree from car doors hitting it and discourage animals from entering it.

Not so, my friends.  It was three weeks into the season when the first metal fence was broken.  A hapless passenger of an adjacent car was not to blame but what looked like a kid kicking it.  The fact that it could be broken was shocking to me.  I went to Home Depot and bought another.

The Hostas populated.  The poop started to decrease.  When the weeds populated, so did the trash.  When I weeded and watered, it started to be treated less like a garbage can.

Two years later, it's still my garbage can.  This year though, the Hostas are gigantic and I've added two succulents that are spreaders and thrive on full sun.  The metal fence remains with most of the pieces broken.  A future project is building a brick border to replace the fence set in concrete so that people will have to care more when they open their car doors so it won't be my tree that is damaged.

This evening I added some splashes of color with pink annuals and a purple perennial.  I'm hoping the color and the obvious placement will dissuade more folks from using it like a trash barrel but we shall see.

The key it seems to me is simply not giving up.  It's doing all we can to make it a pretty tree-lined street we can walk down on a perfect night, enjoying the fruits of our neighbors' labors.  Share your secrets in keeping trash at bay!