Chopping down a perfectly healthy tree just to douse it in lights and glitter and watch it die might make some green-leaning locals uncomfortable. Never fear, environmental enthusiasts! A new program allowed city dwellers to actually seasonally adopt a tree earmarked for the San Francisco streets. Friends of the Urban Forest and SF Environment annually arrange for 100 living trees to be temporarily adopted by locals before they're planted along the sidewalks of San Francisco. The adoption fee is a tax-deductible $75—about the cost of a big, fancy Christmas tree anyway.
"Living Christmas trees are much more environmentally friendly than dead ones," FUF executive director Dan Flanagan said in a statement. "People in the Bay Area are good at rethinking tradition, and stewarding a live tree during the holidays is a great example of that in practice."
According to Hoodline, the primrose, Catalina ironwoods, small-leaf tristanias, and fern pines up for adoption don't resemble the traditional Douglas Fir that so many of us associate with ornaments and tinsel. Instead, they make-up the kinds of trees that thrive on San Francisco sidewalks—and for 100 San Francisco families, in their holiday living rooms. Traditional Christmas trees are, "not suited for street planting in San Francisco, as they're frequently too small to meet the city's minimum planting size, and then grow up to be too large to maintain."
Once the trees are returned to FUF (or picked up for a $25 fee), they still need another 18 months in a special city lot to grow to appropriate sidewalk-shade size. Adopters can actually follow the progress of their tree and be a part of its replanting somewhere in San Francisco.
FUF's 10th annual tree adoption extravaganza was held last weekend, but the website looks open to additional adopters. Check out some of the happy adopters and their trees in these adorable Instagram uploads.
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