Community Corner

'Trees For Threes' Launches In Fort Greene Park

The soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets help plant the first of hundreds of trees on Friday.

The Nets Basketball organization joined metro area landscape company Lawns By Yorkshire at Fort Greene Park Friday to announce a green initiative, Trees for Threes, committing to plant a tree for every successful three-point shot made by the team last season.

That means that 459 trees will be planted this summer and fall, with the number split between Branch Brook Park in Newark and Fort Greene Park — only a few blocks away from the Barclays Center.

"We are very excited to call this borough our home and we are committed to making a positive impact," said Petra Pope, the Nets senior vice president of event marketing.

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Former Nets star center Darryl Dawkins joined the Nets dancers and "Sly," the team's mascot, at the ceremonial planting of a pin oak tree at the southern edge of the park near Cumberland Street. 

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who did not attend the event, put the 230 soon-to-be-planted trees in the park in the context of an initiative that calls for the planting of one million trees over the next decade. 

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“On behalf of all New Yorkers, I commend Lawns by Yorkshire and the Nets for their outstanding commitment to helping us create a greener, greater New York," Bloomberg said in a statement.

The occasion also provided an opportunity by the borough's number one booster to let the New York Knicks know there would soon be another game in town. 

"The Manhattan Knicks, they are trembling. They went on a spending spree for one reason: to stop the movement of fans from them to us," said Brooklyn borough president Marty Markowitz. "But no matter what they try to do, they don't understand the power of the Brooklyn attitude."


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