ROOSEVELT ISLAND — Cherry Blossoms are blooming all around New York City, from Central Park to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.<\/p>\n
Roosevelt Island, which sits between Manhattan proper and Queens in the East River, is one of the most popular places in the city to see the pink trees.<\/p>\n
It’s the city’s lushest collection of cherry blossom trees.<\/p>\n
More than 100 are bursting with color for several weeks around this time of year, drawing visitors from across the globe.<\/p>\n
An enforcement team who call themselves ‘Petal Protectors” are trying to protect the cherry trees during the busiest time on the island.<\/p>\n
“We are trying to protect cherry blossom plants,” Petal Protector Kavita Rani said.<\/p>\n
The volunteers live on the island and can be seen wearing authoritative pink vests.<\/p>\n
They’re trying to protect the trees from visitors who pull on branches or petals, climb on them or sometimes worse.<\/p>\n
“They grab hold of them and pull them down. Sometimes get on somebody’s shoulders and pull them down and break them,” Bonnie Cordova said.<\/p>\n
“We saw somebody who brought a step ladder just to cut down some branches,” Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation’s Bryant Daniels said.<\/p>\n
The Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation started the initiative last year not only as a way to protect the cherry trees, but to also to promote all the island has to offer.<\/p>\n
Social media did most of the marketing.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it’s also the reason why the trees need protectors.<\/p>\n
“Most people are pretty respectful. Every now and then you get some folks who don’t want their Instagram photo ruined but by and large, people are pretty respectful,” Daniels said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ROOSEVELT ISLAND — Cherry Blossoms are blooming all around New York City, from Central Park to the Brooklyn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[72776,9,24,55,54,56,81864,5152,81865],"class_list":{"0":"post-206502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-cherry-blossoms","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-city-news","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-petal-protectors","15":"tag-roosevelt-island","16":"tag-volunteer-group"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}