EXPENSIVE TREES

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 30, 4 August 1927, Page 13

EXPENSIVE TREES

IN GLENMORE STREET

TO SAVE FORTY

MAY COST £1000

Though the Mayor and his council and the council officers have from time to time been described as downright vandals where trees are concerned, mcii without an eye among them for the beauty of green things growing, the fact remains that ever since the widening of Glenmore street was decided upon there has been almost more discussion than enough over means by which trees which stand in the way of essential widening work might be saved. A lot of them will definitely have to go, and though it might be thought that some of the larger trees in the gully which is to be filled in could be left and the filling made round them, this would merely be to spare the axe and substitute slow suffocation. A tree buries its roots just as far underground as is advisable from the tree's point of view, and to add another fifteen or twenty feet of covering must slowly kill the tree. It is not the growth in the gully that has given most concern, but the line of cabbage trees reaching up from the main gates of the Gardens, inside the. picket fence, to the first tramway loop. A week ago it was thought that they must go, but there was a faint hope for them and they were therefore left standing, though the soil about them was taken' down two or three feet in level. Now it is pretty well decided that they must stay, but they are going to be expensive embellishments.

The widening of this length, if carried out on the cabbage tree side alone, would mean that, the new road line would be about three feet inside the line of trees, with the footpath outside that again. Obviously in ttiat case the trees would have to be sacrificed. If, however, some widening can be done by cutting into the bank on the opposide of the roadway, it will be possible to retain the trees as an outer edging to the footpath, in line with the kerb, or thereabout. Excellent idea! But a costly one. ■ £40 PER TREE. In the first place, several lengths of concrete walling will be required to support the back where it is cut away, and a small amount of property would have to be taken. Concrete walling' has a remarkable faculty of running away with money, and property is not nowadays to be had for nothing; and it is quite on the cards that to carry' out the tree-saving proposal would run into £1000, quite possibly more. Actutually there are under fifty of these trees, and they are, moreover, not such trees as oaks or the tough old-timers that were there long before Captain Cook came to New Zealand or William conquered England (which is the correct way of indicating that a tree is becoming venerable). On the contrary, they were planted not more than 20 years ago. Each tree will cost between £40 and £50 to save. TRANSPLANTING OUT OF QUESTION. Unquestionably this line of native trees, even more typically native than the accepted emblematic fern tree (because New Zealanders know the 'cabbage tree better than the fern) is a | feature of the Gardens, and to destroy [ them would take away greatly from this [length of roadway; but, even so, there is room for considerable probing of mind as to whether even fifty twenty-year-old trees should be saved at so high a cost. If they were hoary old stagers, going back even to the beginning of Wellington, and having no connection whatever with Captain Cook or William the Conqueror, £1000 would not be reckoned so large a sum. 120,000 TREES FOE £1000. Unfortunately cabbage trees do not take transplanting kindly, and even small trees cannot be shifted with any guarantee of success, otherwise the difficulty could be overcome simply enough. If these trees should go and a new line should be planted it 'would probably be eight of ten years before there would be much of a showing again; but, looked at from another aspect, if £1000 could be saved in this widening job ana spent on general treeplanting, approximately another 100 acres of bare Town Belt could be planted, not with trees which would make an immediate digplay, but with 120 000 trees that would make a wonderful showing as years go by. Looked at from another point of view again, »1000. saved on this job would provide work for fifty men for the best part of six weeks. But from whatever point of view this is looked at, the fact remains that everyone does want to see those trees saved, if it can be done at reasonable cost. •