"X" Marks the Spot

The council is holding a "tree planting event" in our neighbourhood. According to the leaflet, we are "invited" to make our neighbourhood "a cooler, shadier, greener, more beautiful and carbon-friendly place by planting street trees."

Oh, really?

When I saw that ours was one of about a dozen streets in the area to be receiving trees, I was not excited by the prospect. To say that I was unamused would be an understatement.

Let me put it into perspective. The council has clearly gone this route before around here. Several streets around here, including ours, have large Leopard trees. They drop their seed pods all over the footpaths and make a mess, but at least they are useful as shade trees. Most of these are fairly well established, so they were obviously planted years ago. The most recent round of plantings occurred not long before we bought our house (9 years ago), and they appear to be some sort of Lilly Pilly, although I've never seen any of them in flower or growing berries, so they're not providing any "beauty". Most of them are no more than about 5 feet high, so they don't provide much shade either. There was a half dead specimen planted outside our place when we moved in, but we soon sorted it out. I've no idea what species they intend to plant this time, but we already have enough trees in our street.

Two days ago they marked out the spots where the holes will be dug in preparation for the planting this coming Saturday. Every house that doesn't already have a tree or shrub out the front, was marked with a blue cross. This means they plan to have a tree in front of every house. Every single house! (So much for being "invited") We already have less than average visibility in our street due to the curve in the road and the fact that people who live on the bend, park their cars outside on the street. We don't need the visibility restricted even more by all these new trees.

Apparently this planting is "part of a neighbourhood enhancement project, identified by the community". Well, as rate payers, we are part of the community and nobody asked us if we wanted a tree planted outside! If they're so hell-bent on greening up the city and creating an "urban forest", maybe they should start in the new estates that don't have any trees! Council is committed to plant 2 million trees in Brisbane over 4 years to grow this urban forest, as they put it. Great for the environment, sure, but living in an "urban forest" didn't work out so well for the residents of The Gap during those huge storms, did it?

Turns out though, that you can phone the local member and have your name and address put on a list to not receive a tree. Apparently they would rather people who objected didn't get a tree in the first place, than have people digging them up later on.

If that's the case, they should have printed that fact on their leaflets! Not everyone will realise this, and since a lot of people won't want the trees, my guess is there will be a lot of trees getting dug up in the coming weeks.

I'm off to scrape blue paint off my footpath.