Historic elms

 

AN EVENTFUL AND SAD YEAR FOR HISTORIC ELMS

The original planting scheme of the Queen Street Gardens involved an avenue of elms evenly spaced along the southern boundary, Queen Street.  On Queen Street in particular, the trees overhang busy public thoroughfares, which makes the monitoring of the risk to the public, via the monitoring of the condition of the trees themselves, an important part of the management of the Gardens.

The trees are inspected annually by a qualified arboriculturist with whom there is a long-standing relationship, and any recommended works are addressed thereafter, whether by the gardener or, for major pruning and felling, a tree surgeon.

2020 has been an eventful, and sad, year for the management of the Gardens’ historic trees.

On two windy Sundays in May and then June, significant branches from trees bordering Queen Street and then Abercromby Place, crashed to the ground, damaging cars which were stopped at a traffic light or parked, respectively.  Thankfully nobody was injured in either incident. 

These tree weaknesses had not been picked up on regular inspections and so the Commissioners approved a drone inspection of all of the remaining historic elms.  The recommendation of this report, in order to manage the risk, was that a further 4 elms should be felled and 7 more undergo ‘major pruning’.

These works were carried out from late December to late February and are now complete.

The sadness of these decisions really cannot be overstated.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Our arboriculturist’s tree planting scheme for the future has been ‘on hold’ for a number of years, due to the lack of a water supply to the Gardens.  To date it has not been possible to secure a connection to the public water network at a reasonable cost.

Following remarks and suggestions made by a keyholder at the 2020 AGM, the Commissioners are currently taking forward a feasibility study regarding the installation of a rainwater harvesting system involving the diversion of rainwater from a neighbouring roof, into storage tanks in a suitable location.

They look forward to being able to update you with more news on this project, in due course.