Tim Savage is a tree man.

“They’re just these alive, beautiful organisms,” Savage said. “They just have this, like, um, longevity like a statute and a dignity and a life.”

Many of his plants start on the fifth floor balcony of his apartment in Queens Village. Among his many plants, the American Chestnut is dear to him.

“I just feel like if I can plant these and the trees will grow, that is just, like, a beautiful thing,” he said.

Savage is a volunteer with the American Chestnut Foundation, an organization dedicated to reviving the tree species after a fungus wiped many of them out a century ago.

“Bringing these trees back will reintroduce this vital resource into the American forest,” he said.

Savage knew that when he planted trees on his terrace in 2018, he was eventually going to need a bigger space.

“Chestnut trees like a particular kind of circumstance to flourish,” he said. “They need sunlight. And they also need dry conditions.”

In 2019, he planted half a dozen American Chestnuts at the Queens County Farm Museum in Floral Park.

He is there once a month, pruning and pulling weeds around the trees and making sure they can thrive.

“Keep them free from competition and they get sunlight and then in a couple of years, they’re going to get, like, this high and flowering,” he said.

The goal is to breed the Farm Museum chestnuts with wild chestnuts that are resistant to the fungus that did so much damage in the 1920s. Savage says that will create a more resilient American Chestnut, and eventually, more trees.

“I love watching plants grow,” he said. “And the fact that this is going to be part of something bigger than me, that just really makes me happy.”

For planting the seeds of American Chestnut conservation, Tim Savage is our New Yorker of the Week.