– Street Tree has its First Trim

On Friday, the tree people from the council came through our suburb, trimming lower branches off all the street trees to raise the canopy.

After some friendly discussion – assuring them that I look after the smaller plants but it’s council’s street tree, planted and maintained by council and the aim is that it grows like the other trees – they trimmed off the lower bushy branches. Now it looks like a real tree.

Street Tree after trimming – now you can see its trunk, it looks like a real tree.

As well as exposing the trunk (and lopcons have lovely trunks) it exposed bare ground and a struggling midgen berry (Austromyrtus dulcis) at the back.

I’ve put in some hardy pigface grown from cuttings to catch the northern sun, and gave them all some water. Lots of fallen leaves everywhere to help protect and feed the soil but drive turf-owning residents crazy.

Street tree looking west
The verge garden provides a good environment for a young street tree.

This tree is more than 50cm taller and the trunk much thicker than the one planted in the grass verge next door, even though I water both at the same time.

Everything is so dry – the little rain there has been, has gone around us.

Lessons for the day:

  1. Street trees need verge gardens to help them thrive
  2. As more verge gardens get planted, we need to find a way to let council workers know what is theirs to maintain and what is maintained by residents. It was lucky that I was home this day. That’s something to be taken into consideration with Shady Lanes projects.
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