Tuesday 23 December 2014

The Sacred Ash Groves (and Sycamore, and Horse Chestnut, etc etc)


Before I begin, let's get one thing straight: I like trees, and I've planted a great many in my time. 

What I'm complaining about here is the thoughtless and misplaced planting of trees or the absence of steady site maintenance which allows self-seeded trees to grow where they shouldn't, and which then permits their subsequent flourishing.

A combination of the above has led to the obliteration of vistas, wholesale marginalisation of vantage points, and obscuring of architectural landmarks everywhere. 


Parliament Hill, Hampstead Heath, London
This has been exacerbated by an epidemic of tree-worshipping of a virulence not seen since the time of the Druids, which dictates that once a tree stands, wherever it may be, and no matter how inconvenient for any purposes other than those of the tree, it must never fall.

The first part of the problem, like so many others, can be laid at the door of the Chicago School's hypothetical model of economics, first put into effect in Pinochet's Chile, then as Reagonomics, then Thatcherism, and eventually as a global dogma which dictates that the world must be run by, and for the benefit of, a top echelon of businessmen, with, ultimately, disastrous effects for everyone except the top echelon of businessmen.

One of the many consequences of this was the ditching of longterm, gradual methods of keeping things running, administered by experts kept on tap, and the replacement of those methods by repeated short term, quick-fix interventions from cheaply-hired non-experts.

So in this case, sites such as public parks were looked after by teams of gardeners who were trained by a system in which experienced gardeners passed their skills on and supervised new members of the team. The teams of gardeners were also local teams who had an intimate knowledge of and pride in looking after their own patch.
They were part of local government and directly accountable to democratically-elected councillors.

Such work is now done by gangs of teenaged skinheads employed on minimum wages by outside contractors hired by local government forced under Thatcherite lowest cost tendering rules to employ the cheapest option, regardless of how unrealistic it may be for a decent job to be done at that price. 
Steady maintenance is replaced by widely-spaced periodic blitzes where shrubs are brutally cut off horizontally as if by using a spirit level, and any tree saplings that have appeared since the last visit are left to sprout and grow uncontrolled. 
Planting of perennials, border plants, trees and shrubs is indiscriminate, done by people who are seemingly either unaware of or indifferent to the fact that what they're planting will grow at different rates and end up being different sizes.

Maintenance of roadside verges and railway tracksides was also by teams looking after particular stretches of road or track, in longterm employment and also accountable to the public, but not any longer. 

Large sections of railway journeys now resemble green-walled corridors, with any sight of the landscape invisible behind phalanxes of strangled, densely-packed sycamores. In this case, of course, the main reason for keeping trees away was to avoid the problem of leaves on tracks affecting braking and leading to interruptions of service - not a problem for the company responsible for trackside maintenance, because they don't run the trains.

The problem of public parks and beauty spots being blighted by uncontrolled tree growth can be seen everywhere and anywhere, but the consequences are most serious when, rather than views being blighted, they are obliterated.

The worst example I have seen of this, by a long way, is in Barcelona. The best view of the city and its situation on the shores of the Mediterranean is from the cliffs of Montjuic. The problem is, when the city hosted the Olympics in 1992, the area was landscaped and terraced to provide car parks and areas for stalls selling souvenirs and food for people visiting the stadium below, now used for pop concerts as well as sport. 

When I visited recently, it was all strangely deserted as I walked from level to level climbing the slope. When I got to the top, I found out why. A wide viewing platform had been created at the summit, but, incredibly, shrubbery and trees had been planted on the other side of the low wall on the brink of the cliff, which had grown up to form a dense hedge completely obscuring the view - negating the very purpose people originally visited the site before it was landscaped.

I could go on, but very briefly: Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath used to have a magnificent view of the whole of London, which is now restricted to a narrow slot by an overgrowth of self-seeded scrub together with deliberately planted trees which have appeared over the past 25 years. 


And at a former mine spoil tip in Lancashire landscaped to form an outdoor sculpture site designed for the enjoyment of views - of the landscape from the top, and of the sculpture on top from the surrounding landscape - the Forestry Commission, presumably a sponsor, has carpeted the entire mound with a thicket of immature trees which, with the exception of a single sightline where the path reaches the summit, already obscures any view of the landscape from the top. 


As the trees mature, it will become impossible to see the giant piece of stonework commissioned for the site from anywhere in the surrounding landscape, except for a head-on view, from which point the sculpture's subject is impossible to discern at a distance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_(sculpture)