The seeds of a greener future are about to be planted in one of the city’s most notoriously barren neighborhoods.
Sixteen ginko, oak and sweet gum seeds, to be exact.
A community group called the Red Hook Initiative announced the good news this week, telling residents that they could expect, in a decade or so growing time, to see 16 big, leafy trees on what is now an especially forlorn stretch of Clinton Street just west of the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway between West Ninth and Center streets.
“I’m hoping in 10 years we will be able to put our picnic tables to good use,” said Vanessa Staton, organizer of the program. “Right now, we’re ready with the benches, but we don’t have enough shade for the picnic.”
The trees are a long-overdue effort to bring foliage to a neighborhood that lags behind others in the amount of leafy cover, and leads in asthma rates.
“We know Red Hook has less canopy cover than other neighborhoods,” said Parks Department arborist Laura Wooley, “so we want to make sure we are planting a good mix of big, leafy, pollution-absorbing trees.”
Wooley said that ginkos could fare well in the Hook because of the thick-skinned species’ resistance to car exhaust
The Red Hook Initiative is also asking residents to request more street trees, as the city’s forestry division considers such requests each spring.
It is a little known secret that neighborhoods with more trees get the green because they ask for it.
“Now it’s Red Hook’s turn to make requests,” Staton said.
