Alison

Why is this tree painted blue?

Over the years I’ve come across many trees that are painted blue and often wondered why. The other day I spotted another one so decided to actually look into it.

Apparently it started in Western Australia and encourages people to choose a dead tree that needs a “blue lease on life” and paint it in memory of a friend who lost their life to depression or had battled the illness.

There is a much longer story on The Blue Tree Project and its aim is to help people start talking openly about feeling blue.

Posted as part of Debbie’s Six Word Saturday

32 comments

  8. I hadn’t come across this custom before, I don’t think it’s made it to the UK – as yet, anyway. Interesting idea, although as Margaret says, after the year we’ve just had we could run out of dead trees to paint 😦

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  9. How fascinating, and what a great idea. When we were in Chicago some years back there were trees all over the place hung with blue balls and pom-poms and when we enquired we were told that every blue ball on the tree represented a case of child abuse. The idea was to make it obvious to the populace just how much abuse was going on.

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  15. Interesting. Although I agree with the idea that we as people do not talk about our negative feelings and emotions enough I disagree with this idea as to raising awareness by painting a tree blue. There are infinite other ways to symbolize this.
    If we stop and think for ourselves and not follow blindly what the other person is doing we will realize that this is essentially graffiti but on living nature. This tree may seem dead but that is only their perception of it, just because it appears to have no leaves on it does not mean it’s “dead”, after all, is it not still standing tall? Do not underestimate the power of life-force and the power of life-energy nature has within itself. You wouldn’t paint a wall blue so why go and put chemicals on a plant? I hope this fad does not go far and people realize how this is disrespectful to nature.

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  16. Such a nice way to give life back to a dead tree. I don’t think I have seen them anywhere so the trend might still be just on your side of the world.

    People don’t talk about feeling blue enough, they think it makes them feel weak or ungrateful because there are people who have it worse. The thing is, we all have those feelings sometimes and they should be addressed. I am actually having a pretty bad week mentally as the lockdown in UK is finally cracking my usually positive outlook, but talking with friends always helps.

    No one is an island, even if the blue trees originate from Australia 😀

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    • Thanks for your comments Jelena
      It must be awful living alone in the UK at the moment. My parents who are 89 and 88 got Covid and recovered ..which is amazing, I hope I get to see them sometime this year
      I hope you have friends to talk to and it must be hard to stay positive all the time.

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      • Oh I don’t live alone, I live with my husband. But my family is all in Croatia, I saw them last summer and I haven’t actually seen any of my friends in months. We were coping pretty well with everything up until now tbh. Just one o those down weeks I guess. It will pass 🤗
        Glad to hear your parents have recovered!! We are lucky and had no cases in the family

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