‘Tears of happiness at the sight of you’: Our love affair with urban trees

The anonymous email was as earnest as it was heartfelt.

“Dear Spotted Gum,” it read. “It’s cliche, I know, to say that you took my breath away, but you took my breath away. You were this strong, solitary monument, and you made me want to burst into tears of happiness at the sight of you.”

Dr Libby Straughan with her favourite tree: a Morton Bay fig in Lincoln Square, Carlton.Credit: Chris Hopkins

New research demonstrates the deep personal connections people forge with the urban environment around them, particularly city trees. And, researchers say, those connections will only get stronger and more important as the warming climate shortens urban trees’ lifespans.

A new project mapping people’s emotional connections to trees draws on Melbourne’s beloved and viral “treemail” program, which allows people to email a tree in Melbourne’s CBD.

The city’s urban forest includes an estimated 80,000 trees including London plane trees, spotted gums and English elms, which provide canopy for about 12.6 per cent of inner Melbourne.

Across Greater Melbourne, 13.4 per cent is covered by tree canopy; a figure that falls to just 5.5 in the western region. The municipalities of Melton and Wyndham have the lowest tree canopy cover in Melbourne, with just 4.1 per cent and 4.2 per cent.

‘Dear [tree] 1040090, is it OK if I call you George? 1040090 seems so impersonal … I hope you get a new neighbor soon. Aloha from Honolulu!’

An excerpt from an email sent to one of Melbourne’s trees

The picture is better in Greater Sydney, where a 2022 tree count recorded 21.7 per cent coverage. The NSW government has announced plans to achieve 40 per cent tree cover by 2036.

In 2009, after almost of a decade of drought, more than 40 per cent of inner Melbourne’s trees were stressed and sick, and in danger of being lost.

The City of Melbourne responded by launching a program to give every tree an email address with a unique ID, allowing people to send an email about a particular tree, including whether it looked damaged or diseased.

Instead, people poured their hearts out in emails to their favourite trees.

Researchers from the universities of Melbourne, Wollongong and Canterbury (in New Zealand) analysed more than 3200 emails sent to the Melbourne project, to track what they tell us about urban people’s relationships to trees.

They can be summed up by four emotions: gratitude, lament, comfort, and solace.

“You were the first tree I would see in leaving Parliament Station every morning and the last every afternoon on my return to the station in that awful January of this year,” one person wrote.

“You and your fellow plane trees made the walk to Peter MacCallum Hospital somewhat bearable. There my beloved husband was losing the battle of his life.”

The lemon scented gum trees near Melbourne University in Parkville.Credit: Eddie Jim

Others posed questions, such as “would you consider your fingers to be your branches or your roots?” or confided their fears.

“Dear 1040090,” wrote another.

“Is it okay if I call you George? 1040090 seems so impersonal. I was trying to contact your neighbor next to the path, but it looks like he was removed. I’m sorry about that. Do you miss him? I hope you get a new neighbor soon. Aloha from Honolulu! (Taylor)”

Dr Libby Straughan, from the University of Melbourne, said the project offered insights into people’s inner workings that would not have been otherwise apparent.

“It’s hard to imagine, without the emails, how we would have really appreciated that depth that we all feel, but we don’t necessarily talk about,” she said. “It’s not something we talk about. So the emails really have given us an opportunity to just understand how, how much people care about trees.”

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