Two-year-old Lila was adopted by an eager Oneonta couple this summer.
She’s a lilac tree on Spring Street in need of weekly watering.
It’s part of a new city program for volunteer tree watering. Using a website from the Oneonta city government, volunteers log data on their adopted tree’s health as they water the trees on a regular basis.
“With your help, 19 of the new additions to the City of Oneonta’s urban forest program are being cared for, which is especially important during hot weather,” a city announcement posted on social media July 13 stated.
Maureen Seymour, a geographic information system technician for the city of Oneonta who has facilitated the program, said it began June 11.
“Optimally, the trees should get about 15 gallons of water per week,” Seymour said, “but, of course, anything is better than nothing. We have some volunteers that do less several times a week to make lugging the water easier for them.”
Lila was one tree receiving special attention Thursday, Aug. 13.
“I named her,” Charlie Maffei said with a smile, as he poured water into a gator bag at the base of the skinny tree, no taller than 10 feet. He said he has been watering the tree since about the start of the summer.
His husband, Gary Maffei, chairperson of the Oneonta Democratic Club, looked on.
“The club tries to do whatever they can in giving back to the city, town,” he said. He said club members saw the city request volunteers and thought “‘well, that’s something we can do.’ So about five or six of our members signed on.”
The program launched several months after the completion of a contracted report on the city’s trees conducted by Davey Resource Group, a natural resource consultancy.
The tree inventory and management plan stated that there were “5,288 trees, stumps, and vacant planting sites across city parks and along the street right-of-way,” and that their lifetime value for the city was about $8.8 million.
“Supporting and funding proactive maintenance of the public tree resource is a sound long-term investment that will reduce tree management costs over time,” the report stated. It further “identified a great need for tree maintenance and tree planting, which will require significant funding” that the city may not be able to offer at this time.
The volunteers lighten that load.
“Now, many cases when there’s a homeowner like this one here,” Gary Maffei said, they’ll come out and ask “‘what are you doing?'”
They explain, and the homeowner will often say, “I’ll take it over with my hose.”
“We’ll still check in on her,” Charlie Maffei said.
To volunteer, email dpsinfo@oneonta.ny.us. To see Seymour’s digital map of trees in Oneonta, visit tinyurl.com/onetreevol.