By Chestnut Avenue I Sat Down and Wept.

Roots

Towards the end of her life when her body was frail and her mind almost an empty vessel my grandmother still loved trees. She suffered from macular degeneration and couldn't see much and yet she was somehow able to discern the outline of trees that stood in the grounds of the old people's home where she lived. "Look at the trees," she would say, screwing up her misty eyes to focus on something beyond the confines of her room, "aren't they beautiful?" I shared her love of trees so I always agreed. Trees are the first thing I remember: three huge beech trees in our back garden. To me they were BFGs before I ever heard of Roald Dahl; Ents, before I stumbled across walking trees in The Lord of the Rings. My mother says as soon as I was big enough I would stand at the picture window in our lounge and shout at them.

Who doesn't love trees? They are capable of out-growing and out-living us all, with roots that crawl through the earth as far and wide as canopies that stretch above it. They are the lungs of the world, producing oxygen to enable us to breathe. They absorb carbon dioxide and other potentially harmful gases such as sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide. They cool the air, bind the soil, provide shelter and shade, bear fruit and nuts, nurture life for birds, insects, bats, mammals and man.  They hint of mystical things, tales they might tell if only they were able, plus they look great.

In cities where air quality is poor and we are surrounded by dirt and grime trees are more important than ever. After bin men visit on Monday mornings the litter they carelessly discard floats down our road like seaweed on a tide. Graffiti is splattered across bricks, hoardings plaster buildings, pitiful homeless people sleep on chewing gum ridden pavements because they've fallen through cracks of this government's risibly named social care programme, but still in the midst of all this we have precious green spaces with trees. Our commons and parks provide respite from the city, allowing us to breath both literally and metaphorically, and they belong to us all. Given this, it beggars belief that Wandsworth Borough Council just took it upon itself to fell more than 50 mature chestnut trees on Tooting Common.

http://theconversation.com/green-for-wellbeing-science-tells-us-how-to-design-urban-spaces-that-heal-us-82437

Felling

It's a week and a day now since this dirty deed was done - see above. My first inkling was a phone call from a friend on Monday morning: it's started, she said, and I went straightaway. We had failed to stop the massacre - despite the Save Chestnut Avenue campaign and 6,565 people signing a petition - the least we could do was record it.

A steel wall was erected around the trees and a man with a paint gun condemned each trunk with a number. More people arrived, a few elderly ladies, a kindly old gent, my mate Jay, an Evening Standard reporter, a woman from BBC local news. Those inside the metal cordon became trapped there, told by police if we left we wouldn't get back in. It became clear the trees wouldn't fall that day after all: they had a stay of execution. Their end would begin at dawn, hidden away from prying eyes, coincidentally on a day when our MP, Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, and a local councillor, Fleur Anderson - who both supported the campaign to save them - were away at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton.

We arranged a candlelit vigil for 6.30am, Tuesday. There were perhaps twenty of us there, armed with tea lights and flowers: a middle aged woman in pink wellies (me), an American, a Canadian, my Australian mate Sam, a straggle of anxious by-standers. The council sent a private security firm, police, and a van full of barking dogs. When I ran after lorries to get photographs, just before 7am, I was aggressively told to move on. That steel fence, the diggers, the men with alsatians, the absent faceless bureaucrats hell-bent on environmental vandalism, despite thousands of objections: it was Orwellian.

The vast majority of trees destroyed were not rotten and diseased with bleeding canker as the council has claimed, nor were they all chestnut trees, some were beeches and oaks. Of the few that were damaged most could have been saved with careful pruning and maintenance. The saplings planted in their place - all small leafed limes - in no way compensate for the loss of so many mature trees. It will be thirty years before the limes provide similar shelter from rain and sun; they will not cleanse the air of pollutants or dapple the path with sunlight or lower the surrounding temperature in the way their predecessors did during what remains of my lifetime.

And what did it cost? The security? The steel ring? The man power to fell them? What did it cost to plant pathetically small saplings in their place? The Heritage Lottery grant used to fund this hobby horse was £45,000. How much of it has been spent on new trees? Could it be that the council was motivated to destroy the chestnut trees not out of concern for the safety of its residents - as it claims - who were after all walking up and down that avenue with children and dogs and grannies for two whole years after the decision to fell them was taken behind closed doors in June 2015, long before the 'public consultation' of 700 people? And not by a 'vision' of a future majestic avenue of small leafed limes either? (Incidentally they can't decide which of these two justifications to use and keep flip flopping between them.) Could it be that instead of bearing the cost of maintaining a bunch of old trees, they saw an opportunity to save money? Even to make a fast buck?

In his fabulous book entitled The Secret Life of Trees: how they live and why they matter, author Colin Tudge describes how in their own way trees speak to one another. The beautiful trees on Chestnut Avenue certainly spoke to me, they said - for God's sake, don't let this cretinous tory council chop us down!

Sorry trees.

Love E x

@DOESNOTDOIT

P.S. If you are one of the 6,565 people who signed the petition to save the trees or were part of the campaign @SaveChestnutAve or merely love trees, as I do, you might want to send your objection to @wandsbc or http://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/  or Cllr Jonathan Cook executive member for environment, culture and community safety - jonathancook@wandsworth.gov.uk