Street Trees

 Our local council has a plan to put in a large number of street trees. I applaud this decision - the more trees the better as far as I'm concerned - but I have to question some of their placement decisions. 

We went out a while ago to find orange crosses along the verge all the way up the road marking where the trees for our street are to go. While many of them will add a lovely note to the streetscape - they're planting almond trees which will look lovely for a short time in Spring though why you'd plant deciduous exotics I have no idea - I'm somewhat staggered at exactly how they think trees will grow in some of the places they propose. We, for example, have a battle axe block which means we have a very narrow front verge - when the driveway is taken out of it it's around three metres across at its widest and that space provides our only access to the rear of the block. As well we have a huge marri tree in our front yard, the canopy of which shades the verge.  So we were somewhat surprised to find they had marked a spot for a tree in the middle of this minute space. 

This will not only block our access to the backyard but will also (unless this is a very odd almond tree) obscure our view of the road and make backing out of our driveway very hazardous - that's assuming, of course, that the tree will thrive there. This is fairly unlikely because we are also in an L-shaped corner of the road which means in the summer, even with shade from our tree, this area gets a huge amount of reflected heat from the large expanse of road in front of it. In the many years we've lived here the only things I've managed to grow there are gazanias and osteospermum daisies and, extremely hardy as these are, both struggle to survive the summer, by the end of which they look very sad indeed. Actually almost dead is a better description. I'm a gardener who likes to take on growing challenges - usually fairly successfully - but this area defeats me.

So I rang the council to find out exactly what was going on which is when I discovered the tree we're getting is an almond.  I confess I laughed out loud when I heard this. Apart from the inconvenience to us in having our access to the back yard blocked, the possibility of an almond tree surviving let alone thriving in these conditions is pretty much nil, something I tried to explain to the woman I spoke to. The only answer I got was "They will have considered that.". Really? In the event that it does survive we will, of course, then have to contend with the danger it presents when we have to exit our driveway. 

To say we're not happy is putting it mildly but there's apparently nothing we can do about it. We're getting a tree no matter what and will have to learn to live with it. The silly thing is that had they placed the marker approximately 30 centimetres to the right it would be in the minuscule garden bed - still almost certain to die because of root competition, shade and heat stress but causing us less inconvenience. We're not the only ones who have complaints about placement. In one instance a eucalyptus - one that grows to be huge - was planted under the power line into a house and we noticed that a tree is to be planted directly on top of a solenoid that controls the sprinkler system of one of our neighbours. 

Interestingly, our cross has all but disappeared due to the heavy rain and severe winds we've suffered over the week since since it was put in place. That's what happens when you spray something on loose leaves and a winter gale hits. It blows away. But I'm sure they will have considered that.