By Forum Staff
Wrap up your holiday season and say goodbye to your tree at Mulchfest.
Join NYC Parks and the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY) in the environmentally-friendly holiday tradition of recycling your tree!
| Below is a list of sites in our area: | ||
| Forest Park* | Forest Park Drive and Woodhaven Boulevard | Chipping |
| Juniper Valley Park* | 80th St./ Juniper Blvd. North and South | Chipping |
| Rockaway Beach | 94th Street and Shorefront Parkway | Drop-Off Only |
For more than 20 years, Parks and DSNY have collected and mulched trees to help planting beds and community gardens around the city grow. Mulch maintains the health of our trees and plants citywide by deterring weeds, retaining moisture, preventing compaction, adding nutrients to the soil, and keeping roots warm. In recent years, Parks has mulched between 25,000 and 30,000 on average annually.
You can drop off your tree at any designated Mulchfest location between December 26, 2019, to January 11, 2020. Trees can be dropped off all day long.
Join us for Chipping Saturdays , January 4, and January 11, from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
You can bring your tree to a chipping site to take home a tree-mento! NYC Parks will chip your tree and give you your very own bag of mulch to use in your backyard or to make a winter bed for a street tree.
NYC Parks hosts Mulchfest drop-off only locations and chipping sites in select parks and Greenthumb gardens across all five boroughs—67 locations in all. A complete list of all Mulchfest locations can be found on NYC Parks’ website.
Trees are chipped, mixed with leaves and recycled into rich compost for NYC’s parks, institutions, and community gardens. Remember to remove all lights, ornaments, tinsel, stands, and plastic bags from your tree.
For those not wishing to participate in tree drop-offs or chipping, weather permitting, DSNY will collect clean Christmas trees starting on Monday, January 6through Friday, January 17, 2020.
If you have an artificial tree you wish to dispose of you can donate or sell used artificial trees in good condition at donateNYC at www1.nyc.gov/assets/donate/index.shtml
You may set out artificial trees as garbage on regular collection day(s). If possible, take apart your tree to recycle the base and trunk (pole) with metal, glass, plastic and cartons. Remove all lights, ornaments and tinsel before placing at the curb.
You can also make your own mulch following these simple directions. Use evergreen boughs and branches from your Christmas tree as mulch to enrich the soil in your garden or street tree beds. Just cut off the smaller branches of your Christmas tree and remove the twigs from evergreen boughs. Lay three to four inches of these trimmings over the bare soil around street trees or in your garden. After removing the branches for mulch, you can take your tree to MulchFest or leave it out for our collection.
