Harold Coop: Aim for an awesome wood

The sad thing about the debate about native versus exotic trees is the small view of Auckland's council and planners while ignoring the wonderful opportunity right beneath their noses.

Ten years ago, in Herald writer Jack Leigh's column, I advanced the idea of an impressive forest-scape sweeping down the sides of Grafton Gully, beside the new motorway changes.

Only Auckland has kauri and totara and the rare asset of a wide, deep gully down into the central city. There is room above, and just below, Grafton Bridge to create again a small example of what we have lost to thrill future generations, Maori and Pakeha alike.

It is a great sadness that the vast forests have gone and Waipoua was only just saved by the vision of one man, the late Professor Barney McGregor. But we could plant imaginatively with tall trees in parts of the motorway. In time, driving into Auckland would rival the experience of the huge boulevards of Paris, so breathtaking in their size and their decisive forethought.

The present replanting plan uses broad-leafed trees, like rewarewa (maximum height 8m). It has coloured trees representing water flows, and upright poles with Maori carving.

These things are imaginative and worthwhile but not a plan for eventual magnificence. There is a vast difference. My suggestion is not "instead of" but "as well as".

Fitzgerald Glade near Rotorua shows that a forest experience does not need a large area. A narrow band of large trees could be hugely impressive. Several reasons have been suggested against this forest plan, all flawed.

First is that strangely fundamentalist argument, "we must use only trees which were there before". That would exclude much of the world's most creative landscaping.

But it is not true. By 1870, kauri were long gone but they were originally there.

Children helping with planting are being told that they are restoring the gully as it was decades ago. But they are being sold short on history. They should be told about our magnificent huge forests, the inner city kauri gum, and given the greater vision of a majesty to come.

The second objection is the possible danger from large trees of branch fall or crash impacts. Proper management prevents the first, and good placement the second.

Optimum placing is back from roading, and a higher level where banks slope. Lighting poles are also present, but lateral crash barriers exclude them and trees. German statistics showed that speedsters die whether boulevards are felled or not.

"You will interfere with sight-lines," I was told. But this defies logic. Kauri have thin trunks; bushy trees block more view. Some people like finding objections.

I suspect the important reason, once suggested to me, is that some engineers, but not all, fear that later alterations requiring tree cutting could provoke an outcry. This is a perverse argument. If we create anything of world class, of course it is harder to alter, but alteration is possible and accepted if justified, unlike the present case. Conversely, if we make something mediocre, no one will object to alterations.

I believe the possibility of a breath-taking forest-scape sweeping down to central Auckland is the type of project planners should be spending their time on.

Transit New Zealand has partially agreed by planning a small triangle of kauri above Grafton Bridge. But a grove is not the same as driving through a small forest. Using about 15m of Auckland City Council land at the bottom of Grafton Cemetery would not disturb it, and would reconstitute our early heritage on what is a heritage-designated site.

However good the brush strokes in small local areas, a landscape painting is only as good as its planning and overall design. Could our council and planners lift their sights, stop threatening beautiful and useful trees, and help to construct a truly magnificent planting for this city?

* Dr Harold Coop, a former eye surgeon, is a past president of Auckland War Memorial Museum and an exhibiting landscape artist.