Most Recent Newsletter

December 2025

Dear Neighbors - 

Fall has been delightful this year. Halloween used to be a one-night affair, but no longer on East 78th Street! With the various houses and buildings competing for festive display, Halloween has become a multi-week affair with ghosts, goblins, and skeletons galore. On reflection, it is pleasing that so many children (and adults) get to enjoy the display long before the mayhem of Halloween evening itself.

We are not good at estimating crowds, but with the sidewalks and street absolutely full of trick-or-treaters, one bystander estimated 800 people at that particular moment in the evening.

Turning to plantings, we hope that all of you on the block have appreciated the Fall planting of ornamental cabbages. We tried them last year, too few and too little, and we hope that they have offered more “oomph” this year! They will remain in place until heavy frost signals that it is time to plant Spring bulbs and put down some Winter greens.

BUDGET & FUNDRAISING

And so we come to the most important part of this December letter: Fundraising! With this edition of our Newsletter we launch our annual fundraising to support Trees 78 Foundation throughout 2026, and for the first time our donors will be able to make their donations on line with credit cards. Since our email list is much smaller than the total number of residents, we will still distribute hard copy newsletters to all the larger buildings, but we sincerely hope that over this next year we can transition to all digital. And if you haven’t already done so, take a look at our new website HERE.

Our 2026 budget is $42,000. Taking into account this coming year’s planting and pruning costs, we project our 2026 expenses will be approximately:

Flower Plantings at Tree Wells $16,500
Flower Maintenance $7,000
Tree Watering and Street Cleaning $9,650
Tree Fertilizing $4,000
Administrative $1,000
Accounting $3,500
Total Expenses $41,650

Fund Raising Goal                                       $ 42,000

We offer our usual suggested amounts for donations on our donation link HERE. Our entire operation depends on your generosity, so we thank you in advance for your help in keeping 78th Street green and beautiful.

If you would like to get in touch with us, please email us at trees78foundation@gmail.com.

We are so very grateful for your support - 

Trees 78 Foundation Board

Rodman (Tad) Paul, 169 - President
Gary Strauss, 188 - Treasurer
Judith Churchill, 169 - Secretary
Lauren Sanders, 150
Margaret Shute, 166
Isabelle Higgins, 170
Sara Weiner, 151
Susan Goldsmith, 179