Ackee: The Toxic Tree That Tastes Delicious.
16th January 2016
Neuro-Arboriculture: Your Brain On Trees.
19th February 2016Sheffield Tree Felling:
Tree felling in Sheffield: cutting down of cherry blossoms.
In Spring 2012 I wrote Sheffield Hanami, about the cherry trees outside my house in Sheffield. In late Summer 2013 I came home one evening to find a “notice to fell” pinned on the tree outside my house. It stated the tree had “outgrown it’s location” and was causing a “footpath obstruction”. Despite my best attempts to argue/pull-strings/beg, with anyone who would listen, the photos show what happened next. While all agreed that the tree was healthy, the highway engineers said that the kerb was “misaligned” and it couldn’t be straightened if the tree remained. About half of the trees on my street were removed. Around this time, a similar story could be told for many of the street trees in the surrounding suburbs.
As someone who has always considered himself a hard-nosed professional when it comes to trees, I found it an intensely emotional experience. Initial feelings of incredulity were followed by anger and powerlessness, followed by melancholy – a kind of grief – when the tree was gone.
Cherry Blossoms being cut down.
Two years later, in summer 2015, trees in South-West Sheffield came under the spotlight, with the associated campaign groups gaining much media attention. I recently noticed the picture of the cherry trees (below) on a campaign website and so I thought it timely to update on the trees and to provide a reminder of the original post, on the value of the much maligned old cherry trees that lined many of Sheffield’s streets.
Cherry Blossoms.
That was then and this is now. We have a replacement tree, a flowering crab apple. It was more plonked than planted, but it’s good quality tree stock, and with some luck it will last a lifetime. The crooked kerb-stone, that was the justification for removing the tree, hasn’t been straightened. Perhaps the highway engineers thought it wasn’t such a big deal after all. It remains as a kind of irregular monument to the tree that is no more.
Flowering Crab Apple Tree.
2 Comments
I am sorry to hear that those beautiful trees were cut down. This would have angered me as well.
Heartbroken and so saddened by this! I absolutely love the Cherry blossoms in Sheffield and had read your Sheffield Hanami post earlier with much interest, so this was quite a shock for me..hope the rest of cherry blossom trees remain safe from such a fate