The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
The second best time is now.’
Anonymous
With heaps of published evidence that trees provide multiple benefits to people and the environment, especially in urban settings you’d think our streets would be choking with them. Street trees seem to me to be on the decline in many of our towns (blame cutbacks and poor cultural practices), with garden trees being removed to make space for cars at an alarming rate. And, in case some of you are thinking that trees simply will not grow on our High Street there are well established cultural practices and design principles to achieve excellent results. If you do it wrong of course the results will be disappointing, as are trees grown in tubs. In the long run trees could be cheaper than establishing and maintaining annually bedding plants and the hanging baskets which used to adorn our lamp posts, but which give only very transient pleasure.
Here’s an expert view:
Trees planted into urban landscapes such as streets, recreational areas and car parks provide important benefits to urban populations … absorption of pollutants, reduction of traffic noise, windbreaks and shelter, as well as reduction of radiation and solar heat gain through shading and evapotranspiration.
Fundamentals of tree establishment: a review.
Proceedings of the Urban Trees Research
Conference 13–14 April 2011
But why should we trust forestry people who have a vested interest in trees? Surely they would have us believe that trees also provide “shape, scale, form and seasonal changes to the landscape”. Well they’ve missed colour from their list of attributes, and the fact that your insurance will soar and tree produce copious amounts of leaf litter and are a magnet for anti-social behaviour? Villains can hide behind trees!
Well, too much irony is bad for the soul, so here is a fairytale from New York, which to some is synonymous only with very tall buildings. It is hard to believe that there are a whopping 5.2 million trees in the city and that New York’s annual tree care budget topped $21m. Recent research persuaded Mayor Bloomberg that they needed even more, some 200,000 more. This research quantified the apparently unquantifiable and calculated that for every $1 spent on tree care operations, the city received $5.60 in benefits, contributed a total $2.3b annually or just under $4k/tree. An extraordinary payback. So treehuggers are not so delusional, it seems.
Intuitively having access to nature in the urban environment would seem to be important for our quality of life, but how often do urban planners incorporate this? Trees are often used, but as decoration (the B&Q pom pom or topiaried bush), or as screens to obscure eyesores (which is no bad thing) or as an afterthought. But the evidence supporting this claim goes further and finds that residential trees seem to affect the mental wellbeing of housing association tenants positively. This alone would be a justification for planting more trees in Dunbar, which has a good concentration of C2 -C4 households and social housing schemes.
I’ve already written about why trees on Dunbar High Street would be a good thing, but it is worth rehearsing some of the benefits:
- visual – even a few trees can have a dramatic impact – an open and windswept vista becomes more intimate helping to frame features and yield glimpses of the architecture and give it more coherence and interest
- microclimate – whether it is a bit of shade or shelter, a few trees can provide this; with careful positioning it is possible that some of the wind tunnel effects could be moderated too
- acoustic buffering – the noise from cars, lorries and buses and deliveries should be attenuated
- lower maintenance costs than bedding plants – hanging baskets and bedding plants are not cheap to establish and keep watered, while the establishment costs of trees may be high – over their lifetime they are probably better value for money
- year round impact – unlike bedding planting schemes which need to be renewed twice yearly, trees have all year value
- they could increase property values, enhancing the feeling of discrete and slightly more private space
- increase a sense of place, making the High Street an attractive place to stroll (which, by the way, unkempt large fibreglass tubs simply cannot – lets get them removed as soon as practical!)
And while we are at it some additional street furniture would be welcome, by older visitors and residents alike, but take care to position it carefully underneath trees rather than in front of people’s living rooms!
Trees could also be established following some realignment of the road / passing paces and around the Abbeylands junction, which does not need to be so wide. Cobbet remarked that Dunbar’s High Street was so wide that it qualified as a square, I paraphrase somewhat.