Trees Cut Down On O’Connell Street
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Was passing by O’ Connell Street yesterday and I saw the trees which once stood in front of The Gresham Hotel and the Ambassador venue etc have been cut down – I was a bit surprised by this as I seem to recall a huge hub-bub about the protection of these trees when the Spire was being put in place – I felt rather saddened – can anyone tell me how they were allowed to be cut down, and why?
From today’s Sunday Times (Sue Denham):
Fair play to Dublin city council for finally knocking down those ghastly plane trees on O’Connell Street. Now we can proceed with the refurbishment of Ireland’s main thoroughfare, and the Green TDs who chained themselves to the foliage can sell their shackles on eBay.
The council workers shouldn’t put their chainsaws into cold storage just yet, though. Now that the humour is on them (and wasn’t it amazing to see council employees working after 6pm?), they should axe the rest of the unnecessary trees around the city centre that clog up the streets and obscure buildings of architectural merit.
As contributors to Archeire, an online architectural appreciation society, noted last week, a veritable forest hides the face of Trinity College during the summer, while one side of Westmoreland Street, one of the busiest in the capital, is an obstacle course of random woodwork.
It’s not that Sue is against trees. They’re fine in their place (er, in the forest). It’s just that sticking down a birch or a poplar has become the lazy urban planner’s way of relieveing rows of concrete. So chop 😎 chop, council. Timber!Sue, I’ve one thing to say to that , fook off with your chainsaw. 😡 Mature trees are more beautiful than any building.
@trace wrote:
From today’s Sunday Times (Sue Denham): It’s not that Sue is against trees. They’re fine in their place (er, in the forest). It’s just that sticking down a birch or a poplar has become the lazy urban planner’s way of relieveing rows of concrete. So chop 😎 chop, council. Timber!
Weehamster,
I normally agree with you on most things but if you consider exactly what is said above to be serious and the rest to be humour it does make a lot more sense.
O’Connell St is a project that will make or break the North Inner City, the trees in that context are lot more disposable than the many hundred mature native hardwoods that will be felled illegally over the coming week in a variety of rural locations. I.E. where there is a perfect spatial relationship between the trees and their surroundings.
@weehamster wrote:
Sue, I’ve one thing to say to that , fook off with your chainsaw. 😡 Mature trees are more beautiful than any building.
Go live in a tree then!
Really mature GregF :rolleyes: ……. I have to agree with weehamster, the last thing that Dublin should be is a ‘concrete jungle’ with no trees (even if they block the view of some buildings). 🙁
So in others words ye’s thought that the overgrown and cluttered assemblage of trees on the central median of O’Connell Street that were aimlessly and haphazardly planted over the decades were really lovely. The Phoenix Park is only up the road if ye’s like that.
Mature trees are more beautiful than any building.
Even if you hold to this subjective opinion (I don’t), how many mature trees are there in Ireland? How many street scapes of architectural and/or historical note are there in the country? The former must out-number the latter by a factor of 1,000 or 10,000 at least. What few interesting streetscapes and buildings we have deserve to be treated with respect or at least be made VISIBLE. It’s absolutely ludecrous that there is no decent view of the remarkable Bank of Ireland building on College Green or of the iconic front gate of Trinity because of a few clumps of non-descript unremarkable trees. I challenge you, to look towards College Green from a few hundred yards up Dame St. and still claim that the trees are beneficial in that setting.
On another note, fair play to Sue Denham for crediting this site for the piece. Many journalists seem to have no scruples when it comes to using the web for article ideas or even as a source for plagarism. I know of at least one case of out-and-out plagarism and have heard reports of a few others.
There are a huge number of exceptional trees that survived the ‘Big Wind’ in 1903 at the Phoneix Park and doubtless Wicklow between the illegal dumps has a number of decent trees as well.
Credit is also due to Sue Denham for her piece which is witty and rightly pulls DCC on what has been lazy planning I.E. planting trees simply to green the concrete. That is why it was so important for a small number of moderately aged trees to make way for an Intergrated Area Plan that looked at all the elements of the built realm and planned for all of them.
Instead of being negative on this I feel that we should be positive that it is possible to create a better public realm in certain circumstances by removing what are usually considered ‘green elements’ that contribute positively to a streetscape. This is not Northumberland Road or Lower Drumcoundra Road this is O’Connell St the central urban spine of the city.
I have no doubt that every tree over 5m in height should be removed between the Parnell monument and the Central Bank (excluding Foster Place) as part of an overall Integrated Area Plan. Also no tree should ever be put in again unless it has a relatively small root structure and should be removed after 20 yerars, I’d say any trees should be left in their planters to facilitate relocation to a Suburban park.
It is more the flippancy with which this topic is often treated amongst to the pro-chainsaw side that inflates tensions about the trees more than anything else I think.
They are valid concerns that people have about mature trees being chopped down – trees that have taken 60-100 years to establish, that have become part of the streetscape, that help carve out an identity for a street like O’Connell Street’s trees, and have an architectural quality in themselves.But when one considers the list of ‘all the trees’ in Dublin city centre on Jimg’s thread that have been put forward for the chop, one must also consider that these are literally the only trees on the city’s main streets!
There’s a handful of them, and all are by and large inappropriate, either in scale, species or location.
It is not so much that ‘all trees must be chopped’, rather the exceptionally few that are there are all inapproriate and ought to be removed and/or replaced, in some cases renewed with a great many more such as on Westmoreland St.It was a sad day from an historical perspective to see the O’Connell Street planes go, most having stood on the median since c1903. And not only this, they were also the last explicitly tangible remnant of the straggling influences of Gardiner’s Mall’s existance, and the strange division that for so long divided Upper and Lower O’Connell St up until the 1960s & 70s.
It was also these trees that influenced the planting of the rest of the street in the 1960s (for good or evil :))As long as an ordered coherent scheme emerges in the upper works, I am all for the removal of these trees.
The planting scheme to the side pavements at least ought to be most impressive.@Graham Hickey wrote:
It was a sad day from an historical perspective to see the O’Connell Street planes go…
Here’s my historical perspective. When I first came to Dublin as a kid, one Christmas, I distinctly remember the Christmas lights lighting up the trees on Dublin’s O’Connell Street and thinking how beautiful they were. I had to be about eight or so. Me, my burger, and the Christmas lights.
And now they are no longer, and I feel saddened. It’s just a personal recollection. I would have thought they could have been trimmed, of tidied in some other way, anything other than chopping them down outright.
I agree with you 100% on that count – the Christmas lights were a personal favourite too.
Emerging in the car from Nth Frederick St to the top of Parnell Square in the darkening evening light and seeing the O’Connell St lights stretching seemingly for miles into the distance is a memory I’ll never ever forget.
It was magical 🙂And on that issue, is the Upper stretch going to be hardwired for Christmas lights, especially after the silly blunder of the central Plaza trees?
Were the trees ever pruned?
This site describes the maintenance of planes:
http://www.chengappa.demon.co.uk/planes/text/usage.html…Pruning
As with many trees, while pruning as not always needed, it is often carried out to shape the tree to fit into its surroundings. Street trees in particular are commonly pruned to keep them away from houses and buildings and fit them into limited available space. The tree responds well to pruning, and strong regrowth occurs. The nature of the pruning varies. Often pollarding (removal of all younger branches to a point or points above head height) is used in suburban streets, but this is sometimes modified to ensure that some new growth is left. In some streets many trees have been repeatedly thinned or have had lower branches removed, to try and keep a semblance of their natural form.A large number of London’s parkland plane trees begin branching at between 2 and 4 m above ground with major limbs developing from this height on the trunk. In some cases this may be due to the planting of standard trees with a clear 2 m of stem, followed perhaps by some additional formative pruning to remove the lowest limbs of young trees. Sometimes it can be seen that parkland trees and trees in other extensive public areas have been pollarded at times in the past, even though there seems to have been adequate room for them to grow freely. It may be that they were pruned ‘in sympathy’ (perhaps not an appropriate expression) with nearby street trees…
Graham – I think you express the situation regarding trees in the city very well. I too supported the removal of the OC St trees because the planting was so central to the new scheme for the street and I think I would agree with people’s opinions of the trees around College Green.
However this city is shamefully devoid of trees and what planting that has occured has generally been badly carried out. Consider the quays, whcih should look so green and lush, with their haphazard planting and gaps. It is shameful that newly renovated streets generally contain no planting even though they could easily be factored in when new building is taking place. A perfect example is Kings Inn Street which has been conpletely rebuilt on but without a tree in sight even though the addition of planting would liven up the streetscape no end. Ironically the marketing photos for these schemes show the building ‘softened’ with planting. Perhaps its the Ray Burke style planting that disappears as quickly as it appears.
It should also be noted to all the chainsaw-happy brigade that urban trees are proven to significantly reduce the heat buildup in urban centres. Additionally, the presence of green verges and planting is important in dealing with surface runoff. The point is that trees and green areas are vital elements to a healthy city. However like any other element in the streetscape they need to be well thought out, well planned and properly maintained. The CC should take some positive action in this area and start planting a legacy for the city of 50 years from now. Cities such as London and Paris have somehow managed to combine successful planting with vistas and architecture…why not Dublin.
The problem is in the choice of tree and the manner in which they are planted i.e. fu*^ed in anywhere. London planes work well in london & suit the scale of that city, but are just not suitable in the long term for Dublin, they are huge trees eventually …
In their prime in the 80’s the plane’s looked very well on O’Connell Street, prompting the city council to throw them in anywhere there was a gap for the 88 millennium … the fact that they put 4 in a group around henry grattan & infront of Thomas Davis on college green inidicates that what they were doing was intended to be either very short term or the council just didn’t have a clue … all you have to do is look at the size of the trees just felled on O’Connell street to realise that planes are not suitable for group planting.
The planes on College Green do nothing for the space, blocking views of trinity & the BOI and really have to go… it looks like its time for a full redesign of the college green area anyway which throws up plenty of other questions …
The quays are probably one of the few places that could take trees as large as planes & could really benefit. A strong consistent run lining both sides of the river could look really good in a couple of years, creating a canopy over the boardwalk etc ….
I reckon street trees are an essential part of any urban design, its just choosing the right type for the right location and doing a little research in to their long term growth habits – Fastigiate Oaks for example, similar to those planted outside dundrum shopping centre, stay tall, thin & upright & can look really good lining a street – there are plenty of others that can do a good job in providing an attractive green foil – highlighting vista’s – without all the bulk that completely removes decent buildings from sight … dublin is not the most photogenic city, we really need to make the most of the gems we have !! .. all they need is a decent landscape architect …
Trees have got to be maintained. Winnipeg is full of Elms, many many areas of Elm lined early 20th houses, the city remains shaded by a forest comprised of over 200,000 elms. Wonderful. But they are 40 years behind in the pruning schedule. They reckon that the Elms should be looked at every 8 years but they’re currently every 48 years. Tree maintainence costs over 1.5 million per annum.
Great link – at least we don’t have a disease battle to contend with, just keeping them pruned is trouble enough over here!
What American city is used at the top and close of the film ‘American Beauty’ with those distinctive avenues of grand trees?
just came across this in the commercial property section of last Sunday’s tribune …
Jim Barrett is quoted as saying that (from the article “Liberation of O’Connell Street enters new phase”) …“There was a suggestion that the existing trees were required to combat air pollution, but we are in fact increasing their number from 60 to 140, and the new trees will also be London planes“
Has the original plan been changed as some token for the loss of the old London planes ??? or does he just have it wrong …
As far as i know the original plan was that 46 Oriental plane trees (Platanus orientalis ‘Curenta’) would line the footpaths from the Spire to Parnell, with 16 standard ornamental mountain ash in the median. Basically the same varieties as used on lower o’connell street minus the Birch.
Has anyone got any info ? London planes on the footpaths would be mad in the long run.
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