Field Guide to Dollar Tree Trees
A collection of images of trees at Dollar Tree store locations across the United States.
2025
A book version of this project, Dollar Tree Trees Field Guide, is avaible here.
A collection of images of trees at Dollar Tree store locations across the United States.
2025
A book version of this project, Dollar Tree Trees Field Guide, is avaible here.
There used to be a grocery store called Fair Share at the end of my block. It was family-owned and aptly named. For one dollar, you could buy three bunches of cilantro, ten limes, or a pack of fresh tortillas. While my family bought the bulk of our groceries from a larger local chain store, it felt like we were at Fair Share multiple times per week for a missing ingredient or last minute something. We loved having a neighborhood grocery store.
Fast-forward a few years and the Fair Share is now a Dollar Tree. Like the more than 8,000 Dollar Tree stores across the United States, this location sells some food, but it’s all shelf-stable. Bottles of soda. Boxes of candy. Bags of chips. Unfortunately their “extreme values every day” corporate mission doesn’t extend to cilantro or limes. And while it’s not the fault of the Dollar Tree that the Fair Share went out of business (the previous owners said the store wasn’t making money), I can’t help but harbor some resentment toward our new corporate neighbor. I wish we could go back and spend more of our family’s weekly grocery budget at the Fair Share, though I know it would have taken more than that to keep it in business.
The idea for this collection of images started with a picture I took of the shadow of a tree, projected by a streetlamp, on the backwall of this same Dollar Tree store at the end of our block. This tree–a Taxodium distichum (bald cypress)–was there when the store was still Fair Share and I trust it will be there long after the Dollar Tree moves on.