Month: June 2017

Urgent help needed to water new trees

Lots of newly-planted trees on The Downs and elsewhere are suffering from lack of water in this unusually dry weather.  Many trees are dying.

The soil around the roots of each tree was so dry that (despite the recent rain) it would now take a lot of water to become hydrated.  Your help is urgently needed to water any of these trees that you see.  Even if they look nearly dead, with a lot of water they may come back to life.  These trees were paid for by members of the public and local organisations.

A number of people have raised concerns and Bristol City Council has said that it will now water each tree twice a week.  Some are in good shape – one sponsor has been watering her own tree.

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Just about hanging on…

Last year, the same thing happened and after six months of raising concerns with Bristol City Council, they said that last year’s problems would not happen again and watering would be sorted out for this year.  Much of the cost of planting a new tree is to cover sufficient watering for the first couple of years.

Clearly, it is a terrible waste of trees, time and effort and upsetting for the sponsors for the trees to die.  The Bristol Tree Forum  will keep raising this problem so that future sponsors can be sure that their trees thrive and that dead trees from this year and last year’s plantings are replaced.  A proper guarantee needs to be obtained for the future.

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Too late – these trees on Redland Green are dead

If you know anyone who sponsored one of these trees alert them and encourage them to water their own tree.  If you see a new tree that is dead or dying please email us a location and photo.

Vassili Papastavrou

Bristol Trees in Crisis III – BTF Emergency Meeting – 6.00 to 8.00 pm, Tuesday 4th July, Bristol City Hall

You are invited to a meeting at Bristol City Hall on Tuesday, 04 July 2017 between 6 and 8 pm.

The meeting will discuss and consider:

  • The Council’s consultation on its recent decision to stop maintaining street trees in the city.
  • The consequences of this should the decision not be reversed.
  • What solutions to this threat to Bristol’s street trees we can to offer.
  • To plan a way ahead.

We hope to hear from speakers from Sheffield, where the Council’s careless decision to outsource highway maintenance without considering the impact on its urban tree cover has and continues to result in the destruction of Sheffield’s magnificent street trees.

We also hope to hear from Birmingham Trees for Life, where, despite a similar decision ten years ago, they are still able to protect, maintain and plant trees in public open spaces.
More information to follow, but make it a date now!
In the meantime, please make your thoughts known by contacting your local Councillor and emailing the Mayor.
You can also Contact us here at Bristol Tree Forum to register your support and offer to help defend Bristol’s public tree spaces.
Please spread the word and forward this blog to others interested in saving Bristol’s trees.
AND FINALLY – Sign our petition!

Trees under threat at the Eastgate Centre – Comments so far…

Many thanks to all of you who have lodged comments on this application (nine so far). Here is one great example:

  1. This proposal flies in the face of the objective of the city council to double tree canopy cover in a generation.
  2. There is clear evidence that climate change is in part being driven by the city heat island effect. Bristol is already two degrees warmer than the surrounding area. A mitigation of this is to ensure that all car parking areas are shaded by trees- and not simply by a perimeter screen, but the use of suitable trees 20 metres apart to cover the entire area. This particular complex already has huge areas of unshaded car parking, and the proposal would only increase this.
  1. The Frome Valley is a key feature of the city’s biodiversity. It is one of a series of wildlife corridors that form a key feature of the attractiveness of the city to humans. This corridor is increasingly being eroded by development. As the River Frome has a huge water catchment area, which is increasingly being developed, creating much greater and faster run off, it floods rapidly and frequently. The fact that flood water is now diverted at the site of the Eastgate shopping centre into the northern stormwater interceptor will not prevent future floods upstream.
  1. Visually this remnant woodland of the Frome Valley is crucial it counteracting the utter ugliness and dreariness of the developed site. This of course originates from the original use of the site as a football and greyhound racing stadium. Bristol deserves better.
  1. What is desperately needed throughout this site is more trees being planted on the land owned by the various firms in the area, and not the destruction of the trees that by happy chance have survived.
  1. The wonderful veteran oak in particular, probably 300 years old, should become the centrepiece of a revival of this dreary area.

This is our earlier blog. Time is running out to lodge your objections. If you want to do so, please lodge your objections here in the Planning application comments section.

These are the Important dates:

Eastgate Trees3

Trees under threat at the Eastgate Centre!

Bristol’s trees are constantly under threat from development, especially when the commercial value of the land they grow on is so great and the public amenity value they offer is not thought worthy of consideration.

Here is (yet) another example.

An outline planning application – Number 17/01580/P – has been made to at the Eastgate Centre on Eastgate Road  for the demolition of the existing drive-thru restaurant. It will be replaced by new retail units with a health and fitness club above and a replacement drive-thru restaurant.

Part of this application will require the destruction and removal of a delightful stand of trees that grow on a triangle of land between the roundabout on Eastgate Road and the existing retail park. This is so that larger retail units can be built and goods vehicles can more easily gain access to the rear of the site. This is a plan of the trees affected.

Eastgate Trees

This is the proposal for what will be planted in their place – a souless echo of what is already there:

Eastgate Trees2

The Council’s own arboricultural officer has objected to the proposal. He advises:

“I have conducted a site visit and reviewed the supporting arboricultural documentation. The trees on site are located on the edge of the proposed development area and provide a significant screen to the already extensive retail development. The group of trees fall within 2 distinct age ranges, a mature group of ash, oak and poplar and a young understorey of secondary infill planting.

The mature trees are protected by TPO 282. The ash and oak are a historic remnant of a landscaped garden (Circa 1900) from the former gas works that occupied the site, the ash appear to of been managed as old pollards which have now grown out. They are historic trees with potential veteran tree characteristics that warrant the TPO status and must be retained. Due to poor management or lack of management the trees have a number of less than satisfactory defects associated with them that have in part been identified within the supporting tree survey from February 2015. The understorey planting appears to date back to the original development of the retail park, this understorey now has a more complex relationship with the larger TPO trees. They reduce the target area of people and property by the restriction of movement within this area and they also provide shade to the lower portions of the main stems which when considering the potential veteran tree characteristics offer significant ecological benefits. The management of this area for the benefit of the mature TPO’d trees would need careful consideration.

The supporting arboricultural survey is out of date and only provides basic survey detail that does not consider age and historic relevance of the TPO’d trees. The survey in not a full BS5387 report as required with DM17: Development Involving Existing Green Infrastructure.

The proposal seeks to redevelop the current Burger King site to increase the number of commercial units with associated HGV delivery bays to the rear.

This proposal would remove the vast majority of the historic TPO’s trees and associated understorey, This would be detrimental to the TPO status of the trees. The final design would be in constant conflict with the trees identified for retention leading to further applications to remove the tree following occupation of the individual units.

The Mature Oak T10 is a key amenity feature located in an elevated position over the roundabout at the gateway of the Eastgate centre; this is a TPO’d tree and no evidence has been provide to justify its removal.

I object to the proposed and would recommend refusal of the application on the grounds of a detrimental impact to the only green infrastructure on site and historic environment. Insufficient detail has been presented in accordance with BCS9, DM15 & DM17. There has been no consideration of the TPO status of the trees or their current or future management.

The arboricultural documentation is poor, out of date and insufficient to support an application, the tree planting plan produced to mitigate the loss of such significant trees has not considered the “Planning obligation SPD, Tree.” (Bristol tree replacement standard (BTRS). I hope you find these comments of use.

Matt Bennett Arboricultural Officer (Planning) City Design Group – Place Directorate City Hall.”

We agree with Matthew! We shall be lodging our objections.

If you also agree, please lodge your objections here in the Planning application comments section. These are the Important dates:

Eastgate Trees3