More than a decade ago, every council-owned tree in Melbourne was given an email address.
It was a way for the City of Melbourne to track any maintenance, but it soon took a more poetic turn.
"To the tree on the corner of Park Road and Alexandria Avenue and that little street that goes up the side. I've always wondered about you ever since my slightly strange driving instructor who always smelled like cat food and peppermints told me that you were his favourite tree," wrote one Melburnian, to a tree.
Monash University researcher and social media historian Julian O'Shea told ABC Radio Melbourne people had started writing love letters and poems after the Urban Forest project's launch in 2012.
"Great cities have great trees … but they need to be maintained, so we need to track them," he said.
"So what the City of Melbourne have done is they've tracked and given a number to every single tree in the city.
"The next step was to make that information accessible."
The information has been uploaded to Urban Forest with a map of every tree, its genus and age.
"And there's a button that says, 'Email this tree'," Mr O'Shea said.
"If a tree wasn't looking very good and needed some love, it just makes it easy for people to around the city to say, 'Hey, City of Melbourne, notice this tree'."
A loving reply
Mr O'Shea has spoken to the City of Melbourne about the project and to the person who receives the emails.
"I met a woman there, Juliana … her team are responsible for the trees, and what has become a quirky emailing project," he said.
"What people did is rather than just write that a tree is broken, they started to write these love letters, letters of appreciation to the tree."
"Dear tree number 1517937, I'm confessing something very dear to me. I have fallen in love with tree number 1583182. I also feel guilty for cheating. I honestly feel really bad and I don't know what to do. Would be really great if you could give me some advice. Regards, tree lover," an anonymous admirer wrote.
"Babe I am sorry that you're so sick. Can I climb you one last time? Strip down that bark for me baby, it'll make you feel better," wrote another.
Juliana and her team often responded with a sense of humour, Mr O'Shea said.
"[Juliana] would say she wouldn't want to talk to the wisdom of trees — she would respond often quite lightly, often with some jokes and some tree puns."
No shortage of letters
Councillor Rohan Leppert said while initially the love letters and poems were a surprise, it was a very "Melbourne response".
"We discovered that once people had emails, they could give trees personalities by pretending the trees could read what was written for them," he said.
"It went viral very quickly and created a connection with Melbourne's urban forest."
The program is unlikely to be cut down anytime soon.
"Even 10 years later, Melburnians every now and then will pen a love letter to a tree … we still get about three a week," Cr Leppert said.
