Save Our Figs and other trees in Newcastle

Beautiful morning to look at trees yesterday.

Two mature figs in Gregson Park are fenced off and the ‘trees under investigation’ sign is displayed.

One fig has a hollow in it which in my ignorance I imagine frightens the average (if not very average) municipal arborist. The other tree looks fine to me. I must do some reading on trees with hollows. The fig birds were as noisy as they used to be in Laman Street.

What a shame Newcastle City Council doesn’t automatically upload arborist reports and warnings of tree removals on its web page. Maybe we’d all be much less inclined to suspect their motives. The Herald reported recently on a bus trip taken by our fearless councillors to see the trees that NCC is ?planning to remove.

I’m told that such briefings/inspection used to be announced on Council’s web page and that members of the public could go along to listen. Such announcements have disappeared – wonder if that was a (former GM) Lindy Hyam ‘reform’ – she was very keen to avoid engaging with the ‘vocal minority’ according to the ‘Sustainability Review’.

It seems disappointing that Council is threatening trees in a park, after years of saying that large trees ‘belong’ in parks. They’re not safe anywhere.

The park was given to the people of Newcastle by the AA company.

A link to the Strategic Plan of Management can be found on this page. Scroll down to the Gregson Park reference. I hope the recently threatened ‘masterplan’ isn’t going to be offensive. And please no more tuckeroos in any of the spaces where figs are Disappeared.  Home

Tags: AA company, figs, Gregson Park, Newcastle City Council, sustainability review, vocal minority

This entry was posted on May 10, 2012 at 1:09 am and is filed under Gregson Park. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.