Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Bye bye blossom as mass tree culling planned for Ladder
Following the last tree removal programme in the Ladder in 2008, Haringey Council have issued information about a new tree cull programme. 46 trees in total are due for the chop. Last time round Hewitt Road lost one of its two remaining cherry trees. This time they're back for the very last. Other roads will share similar fates.
Apparently the trees are either dead, diseased or have "outgrown their locations". But, worryingly, this time there's currently no statement about whether replacements will be planted. I'm awaiting a return of call from the officer responsible with an update on the situation.
Sadly, even when we get replacemeents, they tend to be more ornamental style trees. Here's what the Trees for Cities organisation has to say about that practice:
As the population of London continues to rise, space for people and trees is becoming increasingly difficult to find. Tree planting trends in recent years have shifted to smaller, shorter lived ornamental species. Whilst these trees still play a vital role in improving the city's environment, they are unable to provide the maximum benefits in climate regulation, air filtration and habitat that larger canopy trees provide. In addition the benefits of tree planting are at their highest when the trees reach maturity and so the longer a tree lives the more it has to contribute.
Below are the trees we're about to lose:
Allison Road
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Hewitt Road
Lothair Road North
Mattison Road
Pemberton Road
Raleigh Road
Seymour Road
Sydney Road
Tancred Road
Warham road
Woollaston Road
Wightman Road
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All enquiries to:
Clare Pappalardo, Senior Arboricultural & Allotments Officer, London Borough of Haringey, 020 8489 5774, clare.pappalardo@haringey.gov.uk
Tags for Forum Posts: christmas trees, frobisher stump, street art, trees
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Christopher Fowler on
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Hugh - Agree with you 100% on greening front gardens/yards. Too many are concreted over. I've broken up most of the concrete in ours (hard work using a 4lb club hammer) and started planting some saplings and bushes etc. Slow process. However, given the way that the insurance companies can apparently force the council to cut down street trees, how long will it be before they start to make those of us with trees in our front (or, indeed, back) gardens cut them down, with the threat of being sued for subsidence costs if we don't?
Also, Alison P, agree that the last thing we need, when a lot of us have only small front gardens, is two whopping great bins. I'm sure most of us could manage with the smaller, 120 litre one, just by squashing our recycleables (which is what happens to it all once it gets into the back of the collection vehicles).
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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"I want you to lay down your life, Perkins."
"Right sir!"
"We need a futile gesture at this stage. It will raise the whole tone of the war."
"Yessir!"
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Permalink Reply by Nemone Mercer on
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Is anyone up for drawing up a petition to get the ball rolling on letting the council know what a stupid and short sighted proposal this tree culling is? It almost makes me want to cry!
How can they be behind the idea of 'greening up' Green Lanes on the one hand and proposing this on the other hand I wonder.
We really need to organise ourselves - I'm willing get the ball rolling with 2 or 3 other people to lead on it together?
You're right - they wouldn't do it in Crouch End or Highgate so why take the p*** here?
Nemone - Seymour Road
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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A mature tree harbours at least 200 other species, flora + fauna, and is a complete ecosystem in one. I would like to think that the occupants of a tree can move to the tree next door of the same species, if the branches are not hurled straight into a shredder. If they take out whole rows of trees in one go, this is impossible.
Similarly they could pollard (take the tops off) the plane trees in an alternating pattern, this would also leave a nicer appearance to the road where they all get chopped at once.
I should make myself Head of Trees and see how these things can't be made to work within a bureaucracy.
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Permalink Reply by William Booth on
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Depressing, though understandable. The tarmac/paving slabs way of doing things is not very tree friendly. There should certainly be pressure for a 'cut down one, plant two' commitment - if anything, this would encourage councils to only plant them where they can mature safely. Inner city trees are so valuable, it's terrible to see so many go in one cull.
Another idea for their replacement is a variety of productive trees. Hawthorns are good for wildlife I think (birds), but what about quinces, apples, pears etc that residents can harvest as and when they fancy a few?
And hear hear on the front gardens being re-greened - drives are a huge cause of flooding in London, I understand.
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Permalink Reply by Dick Harris on
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Tree and nature lover though I am, I would recommend that this subject is approached with a great deal more care and sophistication than simply being for or against green trees. We are all living here in houses built on London clay which is notoriously susceptible to shrinkage when tree roots get into it and cause it to dry out. There is an enormous range of difference between trees of different species and size and much depends also upon how close they are to the house. To a close approximation every single house in the ladder stands too close to the street for anything but small trees to be considered. Planting something like a London plane outside your house (or indeed anywhere within 30 feet of your wall) would be like slow suicide. Of course, plane trees are impressive and when well grown they are even majestic. A glance along Park Avenue North in Hornsey shows what an impressive vista they can make. The point to note however is that these trees have not been allowed to grow unhindered because if they had been they would by now be towering fifty feet above the houses. A look at the unrestricted examples along Priory Road where the wide grass strip keeps them well away from houses shows how big they can get. The houses in Park Avenue North are slightly further back from the street than ours but many of them have subsidence problems even though the planes have been pollarded so much. The Council has been pushed by the house owners (backed up by insurance companies) to remove them. I think that planting such trees was a big mistake. Perhaps they thought that pollarding every year or so would be enough to protect the houses but not only does that mean the trees cost much more to maintain but it has also turned to be wrong. Much better to choose only trees that do not have a natural expectation of growing to over 100 feet tall with trunks 10 feet round - this applies also to other beautiful common trees such as ash and sycamore which seed them selves easily in our garden by the hundred and have to be weeded out. A slight incident of subsidence at the back of my house some years ago was attributed to tree roots and has caused me some insurance problems. Since then I have been careful to control deep rooted plants anywhere near my house, including self seeded ash trees on neighbouring land that nobody seems to take responsibility for.
If the council want to take out big trees (and cherry trees can get surprisingly big) and put in naturally smaller ones - take my advice - let them do it and make sure they choose sensibly.
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Surely one way of restricting the size to which trees grow, and in particular restricting the spread of roots, is to plant them in strong tubs or root containers. The roots then cannot spread out, dry out the subsoil and cause subsidence problems.
The problem of subsidence with many of our houses in London (and, indeed, elsewhere in the UK) is that many of them date from the Victorian or early Edwardian periods, when the foundations put in were nothing like as deep as they would be in a modern house. So it is not just the problems with clay subsoil, and its liability to shrink or swell. In the long term, as climate change makes London not only drier, but also makes rainfall much more unreliable, and variable from year to year, we are going to have to look at properly underpinning our older housing stock. That would solve the problem, and would be far better than knocking down housing and replacing it with modern buildings, with their wretchedly tiny rooms and lack of storage space.
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I am not much of a tree expert. I would guess that installing underground root boxes would help a lot but (aside from the cost aspects) it implies only using trees that would prosper in such a way, ie small ones. Actually I do have one such example in my garden. This is a bay tree which I moved into in a large ceramic pot to stop it out competing all the neighbouring plants. At 8 feet, it is already plenty big enough to supply leaves for the kitchen and the pot will probably stop it growing further. However, it now needs to be watered and it shows signs of stress. A friend who has a bay tree in the ground had it cut back last year from over 20 feet and still growing to a mere 10 feet.
The insurance man says, a 20 foot tree should not be closer than 20 feet to the house.
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Therese - You're right about vibration damage from traffic, especially when drivers try to go over the speed bumps too fast, and don't follow the speed restrictions. And I agree with you about putting trees or other plants (bamboo? pampas grass?) in the streets in big big tubs. Sounds a great idea. As for palm trees ... well, who knows? If the climate continues to get warmer in London, then we might end up being able to have palm trees. Harringay becomes the new Hollywood!
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