Mulchfest! Recycle Your Christmas Tree 'Till 2 p.m. Today

MulchFest 2011 started off with a bang at the Prospect Heights Community Farm with a steady stream of good-doers carrying or dragging their trees to the St. Marks Avenue neighborhood garden.

By 12:30 p.m. today the garden had collected more than 50 trees, putting it on its way to surpass last year, when they collected about 80 trees over two days.

 The community farm, on St. Marks between Vanderbilt and Underhill, is one of 70 sites across the city collecting trees for , in which the trees are made into wood chips for parks and individual gardens.

As Prospect Heighters brought their trees over, they were greeted by garden members Akosua Albritton, Jennifer Richman, Mara Gittleman as well as Catherine Orrok and Jon Pope, garden coordinators.

 “I feel like for Christmas we basically cut down all these trees and we can give back in a way by recycling them,” said Richman as she stood shivering in the below-freezing temperature.

 Garden member Jenny Spector spent her volunteer time dragging trees from garbage piles to the garden. Once she managed to drag two large trees and a wreath in one trip.

 But while most of the people who showed up this morning were members of the garden, but not all.

 Carolyn Wall and Phillip Kim dragged their tree from Crown Heights, about a 15-minute walk, they said.

 “It was the closest one,” said Wall as she cradled  a white Chihuahua inside her coat.

 “I came down here because my wife told me to,” joked Omar Slowe, as he dropped off a scrawny, Charley Brown-esque tree around noon.

But getting more serious, he said, "You want to do whatever is the most eco-friendly.”

 “I love it,” said Jennifer Wright Cook, a garden member. “It’s more sustainable for the environment.

 “It’s the only way, the holistic way. It’s Mother Nature for the tree and I’m releasing it back to the earth,” agreed her roommate, Debbie Li.

 Last year the roommates almost didn’t get a tree at all after Li expressed concerns about the . In the end, they decided to buy their trees from as local of a farm as possible in order to further reduce their carbon footprint. Trees sold in Brooklyn can come from as far away as Oregon.

 “This one came from the Finger Lakes,” Wright Cook said proudly, pointing to her tree leaning against the garden’s wrought iron fence.

 Matt Curinga and Cynthia Yahia, also garden members, brought their tree over with their children, 2-year-old Fiona and 4-year-old Diego.

 “We would hate to see them go into a landfill,” Cuinga said.

 Because landfills aren’t turned, or aerated the way a good compost pile is, they produce methane, a cause of global warming, said Orrok, who called herself “coordinator emeritus” of the garden.

 MulchFest is put on by the the NYC Parks Department together with the Department of Sanieation.  Last year, a total of 24,000 trees were recycled through the program.

Collection will continue Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.