A room with a view
5th February 2013Non-natives are welcome!
19th August 2013BS:5837 (2012) Trees in relation to design, demolition and construction – William Morris: Recommendations.
William Morris.
The BS 5837: 2012 Trees in relation to design, demolition and construction – Recommendations; provides guidance in respect of trees on development sites. It aims to provide a balanced approach on deciding which trees are appropriate for retention, on the effect of trees on design considerations and on the means of protecting trees during development.
The latest revision of the document is now one year old. The new document provides Local Planning Authorities more opportunities to refuse planning consent for new developments that may impact on trees and it increases the precautions that developers have to take during construction.
One may be forgiven for thinking the issues surrounding trees on development sites are a modern concern; however, over 100 years before the BS5837 was conceived,the famed artist, poet and writer William Morris wrote about the same issues, his writings could almost have been a direct plea for the creation of the document. His ideas on trees and urban planning are very timely and seem more powerful and relevant now than they were in his own lifetime:
“Again, I must ask what do you do with the trees on a site that is going to be built over? Do you try to save them, to adapt your houses at all to them? Do you understand what treasures they are in a town or a suburb? Or what a relief they will be to the hideous dog-holes which (forgive me!) you are probably going to build in their places? I ask this anxiously, and with grief in my soul, for in London and its suburbs we always begin by clearing a site till it is as bare as the pavement: I really think that almost anybody would have been shocked, if I could have shown him some of the trees that have been wantonly murdered in the suburb in which I live.”
“Though it is conceivable that the loss of your neighbouring open space might in any case have been a loss to you, still the building of a new quarter of a town ought not to be an unmixed calamity to the neighbours: nor would it have been once: for first, the builder doesn’t now murder the trees (at any rate not all of them) for the trifling sum of money their corpses will bring him, but because it will take him too much trouble to fit them into the planning of his houses: so to begin with you would have saved the more part of your trees; and I say your trees, advisedly, for they were at least as much your trees, who loved them and would have saved them, as they were the trees of the man who neglected and murdered them.”
“But here again, see how helpless those are who care about art or nature amidst the hurry of the Century of Commerce. Pray, do not forget, that any one who cuts down a tree wantonly or carelessly, especially in a great town or its suburbs, need make no pretence of caring about art.”
“But here again, see how helpless those are who care about art or nature amidst the hurry of the Century of Commerce. Pray, do not forget, that any one who cuts down a tree wantonly or carelessly, especially in a great town or its suburbs, need make no pretence of caring about art.”
William Morris (1834-1896), “The Beauty of Life,” Hopes and Fears for Art. Five Lectures Delivered in Birmingham, London, and Nottingham.
Adam
I'm a Chartered Arboriculturist at AWA Tree Consultants Ltd. As well as detailing our recent tree survey and arboricultural consultant work, this blog includes wide ranging arboricultural musings, including tree facts, opinion and anecdotes on trees in human culture.
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