Family Trees : Activism: Lynda Zimmer has organized a neighborhood adoption agency for forgotten myrtles and bottle brush. Volunteer ‘parents’ remove waist-high weeds.

Tired of watching weeds shoot up around the trees lining the streets of Porter Ranch, Lynda Zimmer decided to take action by starting her very own tree-adoption agency.

“Everybody was waiting for the city to come and clean up the trees,” said Zimmer, a 14-year resident of Porter Ranch. “But I knew we just couldn’t keep waiting.”

Instead, Zimmer embarked on a plan to remove the waist-high weeds by calling on residents to take responsibility for maintaining the more than 100 city-owned myrtles and bottle brush trees that line Reseda and Sesnon boulevards.

To advertise the program, Zimmer hung signs on the trees that begged neighbors to adopt them.

“I needed help from my neighbors,” Zimmer said. “What better way than to make them feel guilty?”

Her plan worked.

So far, residents have adopted more than 60 trees and are weeding them on a regular basis, said Zimmer, who spends two mornings a month caring for 30 trees.

Adoptive parents range from a 6-year-old girl to the community’s senior citizens.

EmLee Hockenberry took the plunge last week when she adopted a crepe myrtle on Reseda Boulevard just south of Sesnon.

Hockenberry said she has already spent more than three hours filling three 30-gallon garbage bags with weeds that had grown around “her” tree. She predicts it will take just as many bags and just as much time to finish the job.

“I got a bad one,” Hockenberry said. “But now it looks so nice when you drive by.”

Zimmer got the idea of starting a tree-adoption agency after realizing that her neighborhood had been overrun by weeds due to a lack of maintenance.

Over the years, Los Angeles city work crews have weeded the trees in the area sporadically.

Zimmer is now looking for someone to donate 23 live trees to replace dead ones.

Whatever the outcome, an appealing side effect of the program has been the sprouting of seeds of goodwill from Porter Ranch neighbors.

“I think it has brought out a lot of friendliness among the people here,” Zimmer said.

Hockenberry agreed.

“It just makes you feel better when you can take pride in your immediate community,” she said.