Recently, the city of Melbourne came up with an ingenious way to solve the issue of monitoring damage and the condition of trees in public spaces.
Each tree was assigned an e-mail address that the public could then send a message to and report any issues they may have had, i.e. someone defaced it, a branch fell down, etc.
Instead, the people of Melbourne used it for an altogether different purpose - they sent the trees love letters.
One such letter reads:
Dear 1037148,
You deserve to be known by more than a number. I love you. Always and forever.
Other times, people just talked to the tree because they needed to talk to someone:
To: Green Leaf Elm, Tree ID 1022165
29 May 2015
Dear Green Leaf Elm,
I hope you like living at St. Mary's. Most of the time I like it too. I have exams coming up and I should be busy studying. You do not have exams because you are a tree. I don't think that there is much more to talk about as we don't have a lot in common, you being a tree and such. But I'm glad we're in this together.
Cheers,
F
And in some cases, the tree wrote back:
29 May 2015
Hello F,
I do like living here.
I hope you do well in your exams. Research has shown that nature can influence the way people learn in a positive way, so I hope I inspire your learning.
Best wishes,
Green Leaf Elm, Tree ID 1022165
In some cases, people just wanted to get answers to some burning questions:
To: Willow Leaf Peppermint, Tree ID 1357982
29 January 2015
Willow Leaf Peppermint, Tree ID 1357982
Hello Mr Willow Leaf Peppermint, or should I say Mrs Willow Leaf Peppermint?
Do trees have genders?
I hope you've had some nice sun today.
Regards
L
Western Red Cedar, Tree ID 1058295
1 July 2015
Hi Tree,
Are you worried about being affected by the Greek debt crisis? Should Greece be allowed to stay in the European Union?
Regards,
Troy
And sure enough, the trees wrote back:
2 July 2015
Hi Troy,
I seem to remember the Greeks razed you to the ground one time—are you still angry at them?
Greece is not out of the woods yet, but may be out of the EU….Some say that they should be allowed to devalue their currency in order to recover their economy, but the EU will not allow them to do that. Some say that it is partly the austerity program, which has made it this bad. They say austerity was a disaster for Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union and for the recovery of Asia from the GFC…
I don’t know, but then I’m only a tree.
Regards,
Western Red Cedar
We don't know about you, but we're reading all their responses in the voice of the Ents from Lord of the Rings. All deep and grumbly with a hint of an Australian accent.
Seriously though, what a brilliant idea. We wish there was something similar in Dublin. We could e-mail the Spike and ask why it's actually a thing or we could send the Molly Malone statue some half-decent Snapchats.
Via CityLab
