All photos by Scott Lynch
It’s time: Take down your damn tree and bring it to Mulchfest
Bonus: You can bring some of that sweet, sweet mulch home with you during the upcoming 'chipping weekend'
For more than 20 years, the NYC Parks Department and the Department of Sanitation have thrown one of the city’s biggest post-holiday parties, that bonanza for Brooklyn greenery known as Mulchfest. And not even the pandemic can slow it down: Last year the city set a record with nearly 51,000 trees getting mulched and reused as nourishment for the soil in parks, street trees, and community gardens city-wide.
Maria Hernandez Park, Bushwick (Scott Lynch)
Here’s how Mulchfest works. First you need to strip your tree of lights, tinsel, ornaments, stands, and whatever else, then haul it to one of the pens Parks has set up all over Brooklyn. There are Mulchfest drop-offs in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn Heights, Bay Ridge, three in Prospect Park, Cobble Hill, Williamsburg, Bushwick, Sunset Park, Dumbo, Greenpoint, Fort Greene … you can find a full list here. Just toss your tree on the pile, and you’re done. DSNY takes care of the rest.
Domino Park (Scott Lynch)
“I know you can drop your tree off on the curb but I’m not sure when that starts,” Kevin Steele of Brooklyn Heights told Brooklyn Magazine on Sunday, as he dumped his modest fir on the promenade. “I saw the Mulchfest pen, I live nearby, and I was really done with this tree. I had it up for a month.”
Empty-ish (for now) pens at Brooklyn Bridge Park, Dumbo (Scott Lynch)
To Steele’s point, you can leave your tree curbside at any point between Thursday, January 6, and Saturday, January 15. Just make sure it’s completely bare, and don’t put it in a plastic bag.
Another option, and certainly the loudest and most metal of them all, is to bring your tree this weekend, January 8 and 9, to any of Brooklyn’s 19 “chipping sites” between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. and they’ll shred that sucker right in front of you. You can even take home a bag of mulch for your own personal soil-nourishment needs.
Maria Hernandez Park, Bushwick. (Scott Lynch)
Sarah Abdallah of South Williamsburg is a fan. “Last year I brought my tree to get mulched,” she told us while strolling through Domino Park on Sunday. “It was a pain! But I really do believe that we have to all do our part. I’ve been collecting all my food scraps all year and bringing them here to compost. We really need to rethink how we reuse our byproducts! Mulchfest is a great start, but what do we do next?”
McCarren Park, Greenpoint (Scott Lynch)
The Mulchfest pens will be up through January 9. Chipping weekend is this Saturday and Sunday, January 8 and 9. Curbside DSNY pickup of trees runs through January 15.
