Cities are the opposite of families, or at least in the way that Leo Tolstoy described families.
Tolstoy said, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Miserable cities are alike; every wonderful city is wonderful in its own way.
The unique way that Canberra is wonderful is its street trees.
No other city on earth has every street planted with trees of a particular species.
Sure, many have street trees. But none has all its streets like those in Canberra: nature strip; no front fences and a given species of tree planted on each side of the street in a way that gives the street definition.
So Crataegus oxyacantha is planted in Weston Street, Yarralumla, and Platanus acerifolia is planted in Kintore Crescent and so on. The species planted in each street in Canberra are listed in “Street Trees in Canberra”. A H Edwards. ANU Press 1979).
Alas, I cannot find an updated list. Even the most cramped parts of Gungahlin have a species for each street, but the nature strip is often so small that they are vulnerable to turning vehicles.
Most Canberrans probably take the streetscape for granted and assume it will last forever without maintenance. Most Canberrans and visitors to Canberra see the obvious: that this is a bush capital with lots of trees. They see the great belts of green between the townships. But the streetscape (nature strips, no front fences and the street trees) distinguish Canberra.
Charles Weston was the originator of this design. And he executed over several decades from 1913. It was continued by his successor Lindsay Pryor and the people who ran the National Capital Development Commission including its director of landscape architecture, Dr John Gray, until 1989 when the ACT Government took over guardianship.
Even before 1989, the rigor went out of maintaining what had been built before. Now, trends and events have further endangered Canberra’s unique element, mainly other government priorities.
It would be too easy to throw up our hands and say let’s postpone action until the drought is over. How can we do anything about street trees while the drought is causing such mayhem.
But the drought has caused surprisingly little damage to Canberra’s streetscape. It shows how resilient trees can be.
Canberra has lost about 12,500 trees during the drought. Quite a few of those would have died anyway. It sounds a lot, but it is just 2 per cent of Canberra’s 620,000 urban trees.
The damage has not been just because of the drought. You can walk down many Canberra streets and see trees missing, trees dying or trees of a different species mucking up the streetscape. Much of it is long term. Street trees have been missing for more than a decade in the suburb in which I live and some were missing for two decades in the suburb in which I lived before that.
In many respects it is up to us, the citizens of Canberra.
The Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, John Hargreaves, quite reasonably says that no street tree will be replaced during the drought unless the householder gives a commitment to look after it.
The Parks, Conservation and Lands section of the Department relies heavily on public requests to replace street streets. Hargreaves’s office said in a written reply to questions, “Much of the tree maintenance work that is carried out currently is reactive in response to public enquiries.”
Given just $250,000 goes to street trees (about $1 per year per person in Canberra) you can see not much would be leftover for a comprehensive, cyclical maintenance plan. And that is what is needed. Given that many gaps in the streetscape seem to go unfilled for decades, if there is a plan it is not much of one and not well-funded.
There are exceptions. Mugga Way (Canberra’s Embassy Row) seems to get constant attention.
We can hope that the same will apply across Canberra. Hargreaves’s office said, “Under the Government’s Bush Capital Urban Forest Renewal Initiative it is proposed that the planting requirements across the city will be assessed and planting carried out after appropriate consultation with neighbourhood communities.”
That is a proposal for the future. It does not appear to be happening now.
Of course, Governments have competing demands. Often they will oil squeaky doors or pour money into places of electoral sensitivity.
At least in the ACT we do not have a system of single-member electorates which invites attention to the lucky marginal electorates at the expense of other electorates or good policy in general – witness the Federal Government’s desperate, but misguided, throwing of $45 million to keep open a hospital in Devonport in the marginal seat of Bass.
Maintaining street trees is not going to be in that category unless we make it so.
Go out on to your street. Check the gaps in the streetscape and ring Canberra Connect on 132281 and ask for replacement trees.
You might have to give a commitment that you will look after the new trees, but that is not much of the burden – a bucket of water a week will keep a small tree alive.
Crispin Hull is author of “Canberra Australia’s National Capital”