OTT tree pruning

[Daniel84]

Does anybody know why Southwark council are currently decapitating almost every single tree on Oglander Road? They are cutting away every branch just leaving the stumpy branches. Which now means we have a very grey summer to look forward to. I guess they just want to spend their budget somehow.What a waste

[jimbo1964]

I hate the look of pollarded trees. It's been discussed at length in a thread about Barry Rd. I'll be interested to see what those trees look like this summer.

[fl0wer]

You can write to them Daniel, there is a designated Tree Officer.

The usual reason cited is 'crown reduction', intended to reduce the overall bulk and therefore the instability of a tree close to buildings.

Fruit trees should be well pruned - reduced by about a third each year, branches shaped like a bowl to catch the sunshine. Far better crops will result.

Everything will grow back fairly well, but I agree is horrible when first done. At least the Council has heeded our request that people aren't at work on the trees just as birds start to nest.

The next thng is to get better choices of species for urban planting. With climate change come challenges. Some fungi & insects boom, weakening particular trees, and rainfall goes haywire making the Victorain drain systems then tree root/subsidence problems proliferate.

Very hot summers are hell in cities without trees. Well chosen for shade, plus drought and disease resistance are all set to be the name of the game.

[Burbage]

The reason, simply, is that street trees can't spread too much or grow too high, or they become a hazard to traffic, powerlines, houses, children, buildings, roads, drains, sewers, insurers and kittens.

If you look at old photos of Dulwich, or even Google's Streetview, you'll see that it's a regular thing done every so few years, especially to plane trees, and has been since they were little more than saplings, apart from a few periods when trees were simply felled rather than managed when they got in the way of buses. You'll also see that the trees in surrounding streets are managed in the same way, but in different years (the misguided got all upset about Heber Road last year, for example).

And it's not just Southwark. Throughout London, with very few exceptions, all mature street trees have been regularly pruned, pollarded, reduced or whatever, to no obvious ill effect for decades and sometimes centuries. It's one of the reasons why so few of them have fallen over in the recent storms, compared with trees in parks. If there's anything to complain about at all it's that the published schedule of tree works hasn't been updated since October.

[a_m]

Don't worry Daniel84, they do it every year in Oglander Road, apparently just to remove some of the bulk at the top of the trees. By summer all the trees come into glorious full leaf nonetheless.