Timaru has become the latest location to get behind a project aiming to kick the stigma out of mental health, one blue tree at a time.
On Tuesday, to commemorate Mental Health Awareness Week, a dead tree at the intersection of Beswick and Stafford Sts was given a blue makeover by team members and painters from Wattyl New Zealand and Jeff Allan Paint & Paper.
The tree joins 1480 others worldwide as part of the The Blue Tree Project, a mental health charity that was founded in 2019 by Kendall Whyte in Western Australia after her brother Jayden lost his life to suicide.
Shortly before he died, he had painted a dead tree in the bright ultramarine blue colour of Wattyl’s ‘‘Billie Jean’’, which has since been renamed by Wattyl — now the project’s official paint sponsor — to ‘‘Blue Tree’’.
Timaru project organiser Jeff Allan said the idea to do a blue tree in Timaru came about while at a recent Master Painters New Zealand conference.
‘‘I met Jimmy [Agnew] from Wattyl who was there and he raised the idea with me and I said ‘look, I’ll get behind this 100%, count me in’.’’
‘‘I spoke with [Timaru District Mayor] Nigel Bowen and he was very keen to get behind it as well,’’ Mr Allan said.
‘‘He spoke with the parks department and got it confirmed and then it was a goer.
‘‘This particular tree was selected as it was already dead and that’s part of the brief for the project.
‘‘We decided to tie it in this week with mental health week, and I just want to thank Nigel for getting in behind and supporting this as well as all the other councillors who popped out in their lunch break to come along and have a look.
‘‘Also a big thanks to Scotty Mitchell for providing the traffic management free of charge.’’
It was an important project to get behind, he said.
‘‘Mental health affects everybody, especially tradies. A lot of people in the trades have experience with mental health struggles so it just seemed a great initiative and a great cause to get behind — I had no hesitations at all.’’
Within the next week, a small plaque containing a QR code would be added to the tree so that people could scan it and learn more about the project and why exactly the tree had been painted blue.
