No idea where to put this, so I'll be a post whore.

I had always thought that Redwood trees were very special because they would only grow in a very narrow strip along the West Coast where the temperature and humidity are just right. And if you go a mile or two further inland, you won't see them growing.

Imagine my surprise when I was in England and saw an Avenue in Ascot lined with these majestic trees.

I suppose the weather in England is cool and wet like the West Coast. Perfect for planting redwoods. Based on my web sleuthing, these were planted in the 1860s or so. And named Wellingtonia Redwoods after the Duke of Wellington who introduced them from America. But they are known as Sequoias over here.

And there you have me too, not knowing that Sequoias could possibly grow in England.
I do love the insight tourists bring to things I can otherwise see and not notice.

Oh!!! Sequoias = Redwoods? Did not know that.

Sequoias are a type of redwood. There are also Coast Redwoods. And another kind that grows in China. My internet sleuthing found that Wellington introduced the Sequoia to England. They are all 150 years old or younger, so they are not quite as huge as the ones in California. But I expect they will be. The British don't chop down trees willy nilly like we do. I saw some oak trees in Windsor older than the US.

Sigh. Sadly not true.
The old/ named/ significant ones get preservation orders slapped on them.
There is a fight in Aylesbury at present to save a row of Horse Chestnuts which will effectively be ignored by the Council. A guess, but the last attempt to save them was over-ruled.

Bill Bryson says it's because we have such a surfeit of history we've become blase about living monuments. Or indeed any monuments.

Aylesbury Town Centre is a perfect case in point. The wholescale descruction of the perfect delineation of a hilltown from the Saxon period was necessary for progress. Wiping out centuries of information, moving brutally forwards.

Ending up, then as now, with a homogeneous High Street/ Shopping Centre culture. Except now it is failing. Nearby market towns were small enough to maintain their culture. To keep the individuality that drew people. To be too small for McDonalds or Tesco but have shops that sold local duck eggs.

Depends very much on a number of factors, including character of the planning authority and balance of benefits on individual applications.

We've knocked back a lot of applications for felling of trees under a TPO and you'd be surprised at some of the ordinary trees that have such orders oin them. And that doesn;t include the ones covered by a woodland order which works on boundaries rather than specific trees.

If an application for something major, which could help with housing shortage or bring employment to the area, is likely to be made non-viable by TPOs then that sometimes swings it, but there have to be genuinely exceptional circcumstances.

There is a least one sequoia in Canberra, deliberately planted on the grounds of the Australian National University. About 20 metres from a library building. This is a tree which approaches 100 metres tall. :facepalm:

Some people are a bit dopey.

Well I guess it depends on your interpretation of "willy-nilly" but glatt is right. Brits are no way near as ax(e) happy as Americans. It may feel bad there, but come over here and you'll soon revise your opinions. But then it's really easy to grow trees here.....

I've had a number of people come to me wanting help getting the right to fell trees in their gardens and so on. One in particular I remember very clearly, involved an elderly couple in a bungalow with a sycamore that was massive and dropping slippyshit al over their path. They were talking about possibly selling up[ and moving if the tree wasn't removed.

They were refused the right to fell the tree. It was there before thgeir bungalow. It was subject to a TPO (tree preservation order). They appealed the decision of the planning committee and lost the appeal.

At the same time I know of several large scale developments who've had to go back to the drawing board and come up with new designs in order to work around the clumps of trees on their site that are protected.

I also know of occasions when permission has been given to fell trees. In one instance the positioning of trees on the site made any serious use of the site very difficult. With the trees left as they were only 10 houses could have been built on the site. Without the trees there could be up to 15 dwellings. The applicant made a good case for the development not being viable with fewer than 15 dwellings, particularly as the houses in quesytion were so-called 'affordable housing' which we as a borough are desperately short of.

They were allowed to chop down some of the trees, on the understandimng they would plant new trees in other, less awkward parts of the site.

I also know of one in which a family with a severely disabled adult daughter wanted to fell a protected tree in order to build a separate little bungalow in their garden for their girl. We gave permission for that one, though it was a close call.

There are great variations across Australia.

In the southern states, clearing land which wasn't already cleared usually requires a (hard to get) permit and/or gets you in trouble. Unless you're felling old growth forests for woodchips for pulp for paper, and replanting with native but non-local monocultures, then it's OK. Most cities have rules protecting significant trees, and a tree has to be obviously dangerous to human life to get chopped.

The further north you go, the easier trees grow, and the less protection they have.

In northern New South Wales, where the hippies gather (remember that IotD about the woman who was besieged by a pig because she was too much of a hippie to deal with it? That area) there is STRONG protection. I recall a newspaper report of a developer who cut down 20 trees without permission. He was fined $50,000, and ordered to replant 20 trees of the same species in the same locations and put up a $1,000 bond per tree to guarantee the care and survival or replacement of those trees for 20 years.

Once you cross the border and move north in Queensland, property development is pretty much done by getting Saruman to send in the half-orcs for a recreational rampage.

That'll teach me to drink coffee whilst reading the Cellar.

That's in the urban areas Zen. In rural areas, farmers are encouraged to replant in return for carbon credit, which has been going on for years now. I'm not sure if that's in place in other states, but I suspect most states have similar programs.

I am sick of the clear felling in new estates, but since they put the houses so close together, it really doesn't leave much room for large growth trees anyway.

I've noticed plenty of clear felling in urban areas around Melb and Sydney too though. I don't think the problem is isolated to Qld.

'S funny I never used to notice before, but do now, often in supermarkets or large industrial estates there will be odd trees that have been left in place and built around. You'll have a carpark all perfect and smooth except for a round patch where a big old tree stands.

I should add that my information about Queensland is around a decade old.