The New York Groove: “Without the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, we might not have as many trees in the city. The era of economic turmoil in the city doesn’t usually bring to mind greenery: it’s associated with stock images of burnt-out buildings in the Bronx, crumbling squats on the Lower East Side and an eternally spinning newspaper with the famous Daily News “drop dead” headline. But while the city was burning and suffering, something new was growing.  In 1976, a group of volunteers and block associations got together, taught themselves how to prune branches and fertilize tree beds, and told the city they would take over maintaining their local street trees. In exchange, the city agreed to prioritize adding trees to blocks and neighborhoods where they knew trained volunteers were ready to handle the maintenance, at no cost to the cash-strapped city.  That effort grew into the organization Trees New York, and its signature Citizen Pruners program, which celebrated its 50th anniversary earlier this year. It also grew into a broader effort to add more trees to our city, including a tree giveaway that’s happening this month across the five boroughs (more on that farther down). “Trees were used as a way to build communities block by block when there was a lot of people moving out of the communities rather than moving in,” executive director Nelson Villarrubia told The Groove. “Since the city was basically bankrupt, there wasn’t a lot of money.” …