Street will never be the same as its trees come down
AS IF to confirm that autumn is nearly upon us, the leaves are already falling. Drifts of golden plane tree leaves line my drive, turning to mulch in the rain.
As I sweep them to one side and breathe in the mouldering scent, I take solace in this damp squib of a summer by the fact my favourite season of all is coming. Though sadly I shall not get to enjoy these trees for much longer because Sheffield city council – the local authority where I live – has decided to cut them all down.
Nine of our London planes that are perfectly healthy and decades old are being felled along with 6,000 others across the city. The crime our planes have committed is damaging pavements, apparently, although none of my neighbours who tread past them each day seem to mind very much.
This week the chainsaws started buzzing. The magnificent specimen opposite my house is now just a stump (which I disconsolately rolled away to use as a chopping block). They are to be replaced, so the council assures us, as with all the others that are being felled about the city. On our street ornamental acers will be planted where these towering planes stood.
The ecosystem they host, however, will perhaps never return.
I have watched the seasons through these trees. In spring the branches are filled with twittering sparrows in the first flushes of copulation; in summer the canopy grows green and dense, buzzing with foraging bees.
Now left contemplating the ghosts of these planes it makes me realise how we can only really enjoy the seasons through the changes they incur on our surroundings. This autumn on my street the pavements may be less crooked, but it will feel a far more sanitised affair. That said, in time, I’m told acers turn a most wonderful shade of red. For what more do the seasons teach us but that change is ever-present?