If – over the course of the last couple of months – you’ve had the opportunity to wander through any of the Urban Wilds and selected public spaces of Hyde Park, you may possibly have noticed relatively inconspicuous autumn colored textile tags attached to the trunks of various trees.

And if you had decided to step in for a closer look, you would have discovered short, cryptic messages printed on those tags, all of which – in one way or another – would have invited you to get to know and to commune with that particular tree in an ordinary, yet profound manner.

And, in doing that, you would have experienced Tree Care Hyde Park: Public Art for Trees and Their Neighbors – a community-centered concept made real by local artist Jane D. Marsching.

On its surface, it is indeed a public art project, for which a thousand trees across the neighborhood have been (temporarily) adorned with those colorful, compostable message tags that will soon be coming down, if they aren’t already. However, the tags are only one component of Tree Care Hyde Park – which has been much more than an artist simply placing their creation(s) in a public space, taking whatever accolades are offered, and calling it a day.

Rather, it has been a sustained effort by Marsching – through a series of scheduled interactive events and pop-up appearances – to change people’s awareness of the trees all around them.

“You can think about nature as not just a bunch of objects that are there for your aesthetic satisfaction, but they’re actually beings who have intelligence.” Marsching – speaking after a tree tag making workshop last Thursday – was getting at what had inspired her. “Plant sentience is a real thing, and so what would that look like to do a project about that – starting with trees.”

The workshop that she had just led was entirely in keeping with that mindset.

It started off with a small group of attendees – gathered in the side yard of the Hyde Park Library – forming a broad circle near an old elm, as Marsching shared some of the background of the species as an urban tree in Boston, and then encouraged everyone to use their five senses to try to immerse themselves in the existence of the one they had all gathered near: from the way it stands, to the way it is rooted, to the way it moves in the wind, to the way it lives its life.

Afterwards, in the library’s community room, everyone took part in an open-ended writing exercise (using elm ink and bamboo styluses made by Marsching) that reflected on the experience they’d just had, with the goal of extending invitations to engage with the elm. They then took turns sharing what they had written, after which Marsching composed a draft based on what she had heard, went through a few variations with the group, and then finalized their message, or score: “Hey elm, with your endless arms, let’s sweep uncertainty away.”

Aside from the tree tags themselves, the most identifiable feature of the project has been the custom-made wooden wheelbarrow in which Marsching holds and transports her tree tag making operation: a manually operated wooden letterpress, a supply of ink, and blank tree tags.

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Bringing the wheelbarrow to where people already were, and to “where I’d like them to be thinking about – and talking about – trees,” was a key component of Marsching’s approach, and was “a really, really different way of thinking about how to work with the community.”

This was on display at the workshop, as Marsching first told the group about the connection of the letterpress and the ink to the trees, then demonstrated how the tree tags actually get printed, and then gave anyone interested the opportunity to try it themselves, and to bring a tag home.

One attendee was Jasper Sanchez, the assistant curator of the Boston Public Art Triennial. He began working with Marsching last fall after she had been selected by the non-profit as one of four artists for its public art accelerator program. As part of that, she received a $27,000 grant and also participated in skill building workshops regarding the production of public art.

“From the very first workshop, Jane had known that they wanted to create a project that invited people to commune with the trees, to build a relationship with trees in a way that was really intimate and poetic,” Sanchez said of Marsching’s clear artistic sensibility and intention.

Marsching went into the project aware of the fact that Hyde Park has one of the fastest decreasing tree canopies in the city and, from the beginning, reached out to local community groups to get an idea of how they were dealing with the situation. That, in turn, influenced her in determining how to develop her own ideas – which she further articulated.

“At the heart of it, I want people to stand in front of this tree and be like, ‘Ohhh, you’re, like, a being. You’re someone,’” she said of her ideal outcome for those who do take a closer look at her tree tags. “Do you know what I mean? Like, you’re not just something that’s giving me shade, or something that looks pretty. Or you’re not an object. You’re, like, my neighbor.”

For information about Tree Care Hyde Park – including a map of the project’s tree tag locations – visit treecarehydepark.com. The last event of this public art project will be a tree planting at Amatucci Park (1460 Hyde Park Ave.) from 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 14.