Arthur Simpson, a professional forester, always thought that everyone likes a tree.

Then he moved to New York.

“It’s not unusual for people to say they don’t want it,” said Mr. Simpson, the “it” referring to whatever tree the city has resolved to plant in a swatch of sidewalk or other public space. Mr. Simpson is privy to some of those objections because he works for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, one of 40 or so foresters helping to execute Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s million-tree initiative, a plan the mayor announced (one year ago this week) to blitz the city’s five boroughs with a million trees by the year 2017.

If you’re a forester perversely inclined to ply your trade in New York City, the initiative makes now a pretty good time to make a go of it. The city hired 24 foresters in the past year, a good majority of them hailing from places where trees are not exactly controversial. Mr. Simpson, 32, lived and worked in the open spaces of Montana, Oregon and, most recently, Arizona, before hitting it off with a New York-based opera singer whom he met at a party. Now he lives in Queens.

All told, Mr. Simpson has adjusted well to his new urban habitat: He’s got some family in the area, and in the past year he’s even been to five operas, five more than he’d ever seen before moving to the city. A laid-back, fleece-wearing, barely shaven kind of guy, your typical central-casting kind of forester, Mr. Simpson has been really surprised by only one aspect of New York City life, and that’s the unwelcome reception he sometimes get at the site of an imminent tree-planting.