Let It Grow

Every December, towns, cities and businesses around the world choose a living tree to cut down for holiday celebrations. Hosting a decorated tree is a great occasion to build holiday anticipation, increase shopping and attract tourism. 

It also involves the unnecessary destruction of a living tree. We can prevent this without losing tradition, tourism or potential income.   

At Rockefeller Center, a commercial complex in New York City’s business district, the practice of hosting a cut-tree for end-of-year celebrations started 90 years ago. The process has varied over the decades, but currently a crew flies around by helicopter to identify a candidate; negotiations ensue with the tree’s property owner; and then a crane, flat-bed truck, and sometimes a transport plane or river barge are deployed to move this once living creature from birthplace to resting place.

The Rockefeller Center holiday tree is a well-documented example of a mature tree cut from the wild; as opposed to from a tree farm, which is set up to plant, grow, harvest and replant trees annually. Tree farms may also be ripe for questioning but that is another piece for another year. Here we use Rockefeller Center as a stand in to represent the many businesses and public spaces that cut and transport an un-farmed tree for a few weeks of viewing.

One could point to positive outcomes of Rockefeller Center’s approach. There are instances where a landowner donates because the tree has reached the end of its natural life, and may be endangering a nearby structure or property. In recent history, the discarded tree is mulched or milled and the lumber is donated for house building.

The costs, however, outweigh the benefits. There is the environmental footprint of scouting and transporting a tree. There is the death of a once living being. And there is disruption and sometimes destruction within an entire ecosystem that lives among the root system, branches, air and environment where once a tree had stood. The nesting owls that periodically get transported along with the tree make great holiday stories, but they are, in fact, one of many other species of plant, animal and insect life that face homelessness and harm when a +50-foot Norwegian spruce is cut down and taken away from its +50-year home.

A Tree Grows in Midtown

Let’s plant a holiday tree from seed where once stood a cut-tree. 

Starting seeds could come from the pinecones of scouted trees deemed to be perfect and healthy. But this can also be an occasion to invite the public to participate by sending in seeds from their own environments around the world. Receiving the seeds, sorting and choosing which to plant, all of this can be part of the story and excitement surrounding the project.   

Erect a temporary greenhouse in Rockefeller Center Plaza for planting and cultivating through the two to three years of early growth. This physical structure will attract tourists to learn about the evolving project, the complications of planting in a city environment, the difficulty of growing a tree from seed, and what the future plans are. 

As the plants grow, three to four of the heartiest should be chosen for potting. Rockefeller Center can hold a “Take home a native New Yorker” charity raffle to give homes to the plants not picked; winning bidders will have a growing story to show and tell for generations to come.

Once the handful of choice saplings are potted, the tree crew can monitor which is the likeliest to serve the purpose of annually representing holiday spirit. The viability of bringing a tree from seed to adulthood is so slim, it could be argued that a small grove would best serve the purposes, but this is midtown Manhattan, on a rather expensive slab of pavement. 

It’s already a logistical issue to suggest that one massive tree could be planted in Rockefeller Center Plaza. The sunken skating rink, unsustainable in our warming climate, would make a great planter. But with or without that space, even the relatively shallow root system of a Norwegian spruce would compete with granite, sidewalk, buildings, the subway, power lines, water and sewage, and some might believe, alligators.

The reality of limiting to just one sapling supports New York City’s reputation for cutthroat competition. The tree will have to shine the brightest, be the best and knock out all other contenders to win the respect of its fellow New Yorkers. 

The decision-making process should come from experts, but the public can be invited to vote on visual aspects to help garner attention and grow excitement.  

This round will produce more runner-up saplings. These can again be auctioned off to support tree-planting activities elsewhere in the world. 

Wait, No Tree?!

The first years without a dazzling massive tree will no doubt disappoint New Yorkers and visitors alike. It’s hard to say how many people visit the City for the tree, but various sources estimate between 750 to over a million each year, not to mention the tens of thousands of locals who thrill to glimpse this symbol of winter as their bus or cab whizzes by. 

While anecdotally a huge tree would be missed during the growing phase, the prospect of losing income could be one of the main barriers to changing the status quo. 

One solution to get through the sparse growing years is to continue the tradition of hosting a cut-tree until such time as a native born tree can stand on its own. That would work, but it also diminishes the opportunity inherent in each step of this process to involve and inform the public, creating an entire tourism and commercial angle around doing something unusual and doing something good. 

From the seedling greenhouse phase to the small potted grove of early prospects to the eventual chosen sapling, there are chances to capitalize on the progress of this public experiment. 

A community of super fans could be generated by keeping the origins of the “winning” sapling a secret. Seed donors can all believe that they are the parent of the eventual tree that now grows in the center of New York City. 

In the event too many seeds arrive to be tested and reviewed, the excess can be sold in branded gift packets as un-credentialed potential trees.

Once the tree is planted, its first decades of life, at a growth rate of two to three feet per year, will be different every year. Personal memories and photographs of our growing selves and families will be set against the backdrop of the tree’s own progress. 

The media will be thankful for a new angle from which to cover this chestnut of a holiday story.

100% That Tree

The tree could, however, turn out to be a blight on our landscape. Nature rarely comes in perfect, symmetrical, unblemished forms. But even this is an interesting angle of the story.

As every gardener knows, you don’t get to hand pick the result. But at the end of the day, this native New Yorker will have earned its character by living here. Will it be perfect? It will be ours. Grown, nurtured and loved by an interested public.

As happens with all living things, this tree will some day be too old, infirm or damaged in some way. Then like any good tradition, we could do it all over again, starting with a small tree or another simple seed.

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Asa Franz