(transcript - therefore possible errors)

Future Urban Trees the Biological and Political Lifecycles

Chris Williams

The largest trees you see in the urban environment today are most likely the largest trees that any generation will see ever. The political lifecycle, short term decision making does not regard the long term biological imperatives of growing trees. So with an eye on future big trees we need to wrestle and claim the space and the facility of trees, I believe yesterday we talked about space management and place managers I think we all about space managers.

A little bit on my background I grew up in this kind of country. My ancestors arrived in New Zealand in 1823 as missionaries and my grandfather settled here in the hill amongst the trees in 1905 my childhood was about holding this land together with soil conservations plantings and interest in diversification to horticulture, shooting possums, and as I was reminded on the radio as I awoke this morning the keyline factor was being discussed on the radio and I remember that by then my father trying to apply some of the principles then. So I guess I come from a place where we’ve looked forward and we acknowledge where we’ve come from. We had a mutual respect for, a learnt respect for our bush on the left, and our amenity plantings on the right.

My overseas experience after studying horticulture became about landscape and I studied horticulture management and one of the first projects I had was to write a management plan for arboretum it is the largest collection of northern hemisphere and tempered trees in the southern hemisphere, Eastwood Hill arboretum it was a very big learning curve, how to asses and work with a collection that had been totally overgrown and redundant the government didn’t want anything to do with, and was managed by a private trust or a philanthropic trust and now is a huge asset that we have. I also studied, worked and both as a landscape contractor in Auckland and as a Landscape Architect and I have studied, worked and lived in Melbourne both in Central Melbourne and in the bush.

My discussion today is based on a presentation that I gave to Landscape Architects Institute Conference Heritage Landscapes just a few weeks ago in New Zealand the objective was to raise awareness and put the prod into our profession to say hey I think we’ve forgotten something one of our major elements in a city environment. So my discussion today is about this, we know a lot but I believe the situation certainly for us in New Zealand is now serious, we have to look forward because protection mechanisms that we do have aren’t necessarily working these trees are eight years on from the time the earthworks happened and for Springfield subdivisions they were protected and what’s been planted as a replacement aren’t working.

Protection systems were only about twenty years old in New Zealand because of Windfield Housing (top right) a real concern that intensification and general respect for trees was not being managed and you too also have the same kind of things some of the kind of issues about old landscapes as we’ve discussed historical views, bush environments. Our statute that we operate under is the Resource Management Act at this time it was believed to be far reaching and purposeful. The purpose of the Act was well thought about and in fact it appealed to me to move back to New Zealand from Melbourne because we’re talking about heritage, we’re talking about amenity values and we’re talking about ecology.

So there are two sections of the Act that have to be given consideration, trees come under the heritage section the historical section and have arisen just recently that was elevated to an issue of national importance. The other section we have to give regards to the maintenance and enhancement of amenity values, quality of environment and obviously significance of ecosystems. Policies are then ranked there is very little national policy under the Resource Management Act there is a few little bits and pieces developing under the regional policy statements there is a thing called the Coastal Management Plan but they have no real particular weight. The weight already comes under the district plan under the heritage section where trees are protected. This generally includes a schedule of notable trees that have in some way been assessed for their rarity, their landscape value, history, age and size.

In addition some Council’s, too few, have added a general tree protection cover, Auckland City, for arguments sake, has everything included except for a list of exclusions anything over six to eight metres is protected and the height difference is usually between exotic and indigenous species the six metres being indigenous species and there are a few exceptions like fruit trees and a few things like phoenix palms that we call trees on wheels. Specific exotic species, the other form of scheduling is specific types of trees and one of the reasons I became so interested in re-visiting this whole issue is kind of incensed when I moved to a new property and on a skyline I must say it was particular planning requirements I could remove major trees that could be seen from some great distance but I had to get a consent a planning consent application to prune the Oak trees which I was about to protect this whole inconsistent approach is what comes through. Also any specified particular areas, sometimes people talk about a zone like residential one or something like that, that there is a certain weight of protection for that under the district plans.

There was also the horticultural society runs a notable tree register but it has no legal status. The Tree Council was an advocate for the tree protection policies that are now in place its major issue now is inconsistency and what they are trying to deal with, the Tree Council is modelled on the British Tree Council and has had its day and may have it again. The differing methods that leads to this inconsistency. It is agreed amongst my colleagues that we need some form of protection system. It is about creating discussion before the trees go down, that was its original, their original advocacy and that’s where we need to hold on to but the beaurocracy the legalese and things like that have made things difficult, time factors, twelve months to get a consent to prune dead wood a historical tree is beaurocracy gone berko.

Professional relationships, landscape architect vs arborist, arborist vs arborists consultant, the courts or the environment courts are having fun with professional expertise against an argument and a lot of the time quite futile. Sites are still designed without the respect to the trees both before planting and afterwards and we also have the issue of building methods that don’t suit, in fact we’ve adopted the concrete slab housing approach or building approach as appose to building on wooden piles and stumps as in the past so moto scrapers are a big thing in any new development.

From this the needs for revision we advocate there are a few of us that have just suggested that we need to look at some of these ideas for a trade off or, which is a part of the Act where you can provide some kind of compensation or a trade off as dealing with the effects of a development on land change. Some of these things might need to be considered as an, the right, if you’re going to protect trees and look after them or body of trees maybe you can, the development rights can be transferred as in building development rights. Don’t be held by the zone that you’re working in if it’s a certain density of development and a certain zone then maybe we can meet this there has to be flexibility built in there so that that can be, there is some sort of compensation for the landowner and or of course the tree.

Of course through all this there was about more public trees as appose to private trees through intensification, urban intensification, we needed to think about if we were going to remove one tree how many trees were we going to plant the concept of multiple replacements with a management plan we needed to try to keep up the cover and rates relief we have a situation where indigenous bush remnants can be, get rates relief on the perra urban areas so why can’t we apply the same principles to rates relief or some sort of compensation for people that manage historical or near historical trees. One of the major things about a protection system if it is not encompassing it can create an elitism in your tree stock and we need to ask the question of what’s worthy and what trees are doing so I’ll allude to shortly.

And if we’re making changes in the tree canopy or tree areas we have to really concentrate on the enforcement of whatever consent conditions or whatever conditions are being applied to this change to ensure that success and if we talk about instead of a two year standard, one to two year landscape contract we’re not going anywhere because the trees are gone or who gives a toss anyway we have to think about holding those trees and looking after them until they become under some kind of general, more general tree protection system.

Evaluation systems we touched on yesterday we talked about stem its not generally been responded to in New Zealand the one that gets, certainly in Auckland that has favour is the Auckland method which is really not considering valuation but is a way of evaluating for a scheduling under our district plant to give those trees some extra status and the interesting part of that is it is not designed to be assessment it is designed to be undertaken by an arborist and a heritage planner or a landscape architect so there is two people at least involved in the process.

A few key issues, I’m talking about the city suburbs and the city edge as I’ve said before we’ve heard a lot of things about the issues so I’m going to just fly through these but one of the important things that every time you discover an issue or talk about an issue as we have in the last few days there is always an interrelated one, there is always an independence between these issues when we are talking about trees matters in the city and some of these issues are, as I’ve mentioned before, trees are being regarded as urban appendages we don’t have the status necessary at the moment, we have protection, but in the minds of our urban residents do we rarely have, and I think one of my real concerns is within our own professions that’s where the general professional consultant design beaurocrat industry, trees are often the forgotten element the reasons for this is because we have an intensification of all moving rather quickly towards the pioneer quarter acre pavlova paradise is no longer with us and we have to deal somehow when intensification people are getting are losing their connection with nature life is getting rather commoditised this is making us fragmented and we also are in a situation where a lot of the policy development is rather short term.

We had a policy developed recently called the urban design protocols it was a very high level document supported by the ministry environment on a national status. In that there was about three words of vegetation one was to do with biodiversity the other word was to do with biodiversity and the other one was something like green corridors or something like that. And this a way forward about designing our, and managing intensification and the rethink and the processes of managing cities.

That was something that really incensed me I guess that’s why I’m saying what I am saying. We need to refocus funding as we’ve heard always varies I always found when I worked for local government it was easier to get $250,000.00 to build a toilet block than to get $20,000.00 to plant the structure of a new park. We have some big projects both renewal and expansion to do with intensification I guess, a lot of the inconsistency with lifestyles things like occupational, safety and health our horticultural principles have been forgotten horticulture is not the buzz word as it used to be and more particularly we add to that is highly modified soils and for us we’re dealing with hard balled clays and different situation than you do but I think there is a similarity we have to understand that every time you go back into a place even the replacement of large avenues the soil conditions there are very different to when those trees were planted we’re not dealing with pure relatively unaltered if it was altered it was with horse and cart situations we’ve now got very heavy equipment and compaction rates and the engineered soils are really problematic and we have changes in the tree management teams.

So there is a real issue about fears dominating the needs for trees in the urban environment often, our commissioner for the environment use the term ‘death by a thousand cuts’ which I think sort of says something about the way we are dealing with trees in the urban environment. Intensification, it can be good there is a highrise, a semi intensive older style development (at the bottom) that this is what we are doing for the view of course. Fashion, main street of Auckland has these plain trees (here) that are hardly twenty years old (at the bottom)but one of my colleagues wants to create iconic landscape suitable for the south pacific location that we live in by planting our necow palms as a symbol of this, I’m sorry I’m rather cynical because he has cabbaged the quarterline australis (on the right there) has been there for fifteen-twenty years elongated totally meaningless as far as providing any kind of sense of vegetation in that kind of situation and streetscape reconstruction has taken the tulip tree out and replaced it with a palm tree in a box.

Do we deal with removal replacement or visa versa these scrappy old trees I had to argue the toss for a week about them against the will of the people, my colleagues and the council, we managed to save them and have the park planted at the same time unfortunately the park planting eight years on is less than adequate for those trees have survived they are still there and what I hear there is a great deal of community respect that they have something as in (here) which is just a little way down the growth corridor greenfield sites.

There is one tree in this block (here) that was just about a protected tree because of its size one little oak tree in the back corner all these other big trees weren’t protected they could have been taken down by the developer as a matter of course but he did have to provide some reserve contribution so this is what we did. Inappropriate species selection, cul-de-sac with plains, native vs exotic we have this problem, how do things grow. I find it rather distressing when you look at these engineered soils and we’ve forgotten basic horticultural principles. We had this image of having nature in the city tiny mahooto (there) one of the largest living trees on earth we aspire to have this there it is on, replacement on a cul-de-sac that won’t be there next year I can assure you, these trees are sitting in suspended animation, as I say, as I’ve suggested wanting to live or waiting to die.

We have not understood the basic biological requirements of these kinds of trees we want to control we even want to stop these trees escaping by putting them in cages and of course we do have to fix up around them occasionally this is the bottom right is the litigious American society where they have managed to deal with trees quite happily by tarmacking over, it didn’t quite work but as someone suggested the other night nobody walks there anyway it was only me. We have these kind of hard facts as a speaker this morning alluded to and nature does reassert itself I want to just mention (the bottom right) is a tree I found in exhibition gardens in Melbourne several years ago in a balmy summer morning it is a carucaserous its canopy was beautiful no sign of distress in the canopy at all yet it had just fallen over that night and it stank underneath there, is there any explanation -- there’s a few thoughts.

Tree teams are they partnership or collaboration I think that we have tended to have trees dealt with within these professions but there is other major players we have to get the spin right if we are going to move forward we have to take the community with us. The heritage and cultural aspects we can argue that toss for days but it is important, we have to work with the engineers and we have to speak their language and the legal processes are going to, styling our way quite regularly and of course there is the planners who have, should be on our side though they have a vision but they also have this horrible thing of trying control everything, don’t they, with their different processes.

So amongst that there is different skill sets something that I think we need to observe within each profession we have to understand where we’re going we need to look at the potential productive outcomes and that revegetation whether it is yours or ours and that either situation is not a panacea for the loss of trees in the central urban area. We heard yesterday about X thousands of trees out in west Sydney, we have the same kind of thing where people are saying we’re doing all this revegetation yet the trees and the places where people live are declining.

We have to understand what is going to go and what’s going to be productive in the environments we’re asking them to go into some of these environments are forests some of them are just about the tree of course as being a landscape person I’m more interested in the totality than the individual but neither, both are very important we have to consider park plantations if we are going to address things like Kiyoto as was put to us yesterday we need to think about intensity and what these places are going to be able to provide.

Street tree islands where we get total remediation a block where we saw in a shot of Brisbane this morning or maybe it’s a whole corner or a city section you take out and create something that’s worthwhile if we are going to have trees like this (on the right) we need to really look at this whole engineering and control or manage shall I say manage the spaces. There is different forms of shady avenues some of these you will recognise and some of these you’re actually dealing with the problems with how do you deal with something like replacement of these larger trees.

The bottom photograph is planning for big tree replacement although it goes against a lot of horticultural principles it’s a way we’re going to move through we have to understand the way the soils are providing the air and oxygen below pavement. There is an issue that has come up about managing the plans over a period of time if there is a big concept recognise the big concept put it in your management plans, detail is highly organised spaces as we have in some parts.

Most particularly yesterday James Weirick mentioned about people and trees we have to remember too that we are dealing with a very peculiar profession and science, it’s about people and it’s about trees and their space natural objects natural, natural processes and we’ve also got this major thing constraints, structures, we have to acknowledge that and there is not many other professions that deal with three of those very diverse aspects.

Provide consistency, we need a proactive model, I believe with long term vision we need to manage the spaces and we will be judged on the effectiveness of this, the benefits and values that come from it so we must be able to express what we are actually doing we’re trying to deal with these three major values within our community. There is three parts and I’m proposing in New Zealand we deal with it at a national level where the national central agency would deal with certain number of attributes and the strategy, the over arching strategy if you like and then you might apply that to your state government if you think state government is a co-ordination of all the research soils psychotherapy of trees, selection process, the design opportunities and specifications needs to be drawn together so there is a commonality, a commonality of theme through our management of urban trees.

We need to educate the educated engineers like, or others, politicians perhaps, long term vision.

At local level it is a little more easy we identify local variety the community of concern we have our inventories whether what level they might be we have to monitor the changes over time whatever we do should be accessible and deal with public and private trees we’ve got to try and net this thing and not have it, not segregate what goes on on private land or commercial land as appose to the public realm.

Staff and funding of course that’s a major issue, and we need to provide assistance to the local people and one of these ways is a tree wardens scheme which I can talk to anybody about afterwards if they are interested and how to help the community help the process. And then there is industry issues growing standards, arboricultural practices, contractor specifications all these things we’ve heard about we’ve got to deal with quality assurance and asset management but what we really want is an abundant and diverse and dynamic type of urban forest, identify those themes, know the different parcels that we are actually dealing with because we want to look forward to heritage landscapes and there is very compelling reasons both philosophically and practically to have trees in an urban environment of course we’re saying we need trees in the urban environment but I guess there are some suggesting that we could live in concrete deserts.

There is a lot of alternative methods available to us with our understanding science and technology, we need to manage the space for the biological reasons for trees in our environment and manipulate the political systems to suit, there is this grappling of planning, design, management, people, places and structure, biology and politics there is a lot of tension there but I feel sure with talks like this and the talk we will be doing in New Zealand as well and if we can work fairly together I’m sure we’ll come to some common ground a really, a constructive way forward that will only create better cities for all.

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