new trees in bloomingdale—here's hoping this isn't all of it

in the last two weeks, new trees have been planted in empty treeboxes around bloomingdale. while this is a great sight to see, i'm concerned that the city is done with out neighborhood and has moved on to other locations without finishing the job.

look at the above picture, taken on 1st street just north of seaton place. to the left, you can see a new tree planted and mulched, ready to go. to the right, you can see a treebox with one of the decorative treebox guards that was installed last summer. there's an orange spot painted on the curb in front of this treebox, signifying a space where ddot intends to plant a tree. the question is why wasn't this tree planted at the same time as the one to the left? did they run out of trees? did someone change their mind and put the tree further down the street? it seems silly to install a treebox guard and then plant a new tree on the outside of it.

i plan to email someone at the urban forestry administration to express my concerns. hopefully i'll be able to do a follow-up post later this week.

below is a view of these two spaces looking south towards seaton place.

below is another newly planted tree on the 100 block of seaton place. there is an empty treebox behind this one, but it doesn't have the orange dot that signifies a tree will be planted there. does this mean this treebox will remain empty? there's no obvious reason why that would be so.

picutred below is another empty treebox (on seaton place). it has the orange dot painted on the curb, but nothing is in the treebox so far.

you can see the space where that missing tree should go in the photograph below. it's between the tree in the foreground and the small twig of a tree in the background, near the streetlight.

speaking of twigs, some of these new trees are TINY! usually, the trees i've seen planted by the city are at least 1.5 to 2 inches in diameter, and about 8 to 10 feet tall, but there are two trees on seaton place near 2nd street that are about 4 feet tall with almost no branches and are about .5 inch in diameter.

i'm concerned that these trees are too small to ever survive having branches ripped off by kids, being hit by car doors, and generally surviving in a harsh urban environment. time will tell, but i believe ddot planted trees that are too small here. one of them is pictured below.

i'm excited to see that we're getting the new trees we were promised here in bloomingdale, but i can't help but feel less-than-satisfied by what i've seen so far. here's hoping i'm jumping the gun by passing judgment on this spring's plantings!