Tulsa's Up With Trees Seeks Sponsorships For City Median Maintenance

A non-profit Tulsa group is looking for financial help to keep City of Tulsa street medians looking good.

Up With Trees is seeking donors who will help cover the expenses of trimming, pruning and weed control in the street medians.

Up With Trees Executive Director Anna America says this type of maintenance work is not cheap.

"The maintenance work includes watering, mulching, pruning, weed control and others tasks – all of which are labor- and resource-intensive and can be very expensive. The City was working with limited dollars for maintenance, and approached us about using our model – where donors underwrite the costs of planting and taking care of trees – to help cover these expenses," said Anna America.

America says their group has planted 30,000 trees in the Tulsa area and now maintains about 500 tree sites, plus this summer Up With Trees also took over maintenance on nearly 10 miles of City medians, and hopes to find sponsors to help underwrite those costs.

Medians now being maintained by Up With Trees includes:

• 71st Street (Riverside Drive to Garnett Road)
• Yale Avenue (51st to 61st Streets)
• 15th Street (Harvard to Yale Avenues)

Tulsa estimates that it would cost just over $4,000 per mile per year to maintain the sites.

Median sponsorships, including signage, start at $1,900 a year, and a number of spots have already been sponsored, said America.