Lesley Max: Urban chainsaw massacre

Trees in Queen St will disappear as part of a drabbing-down. Picture / Paul Estcourt

The Auckland Chainsaw Massacre will happen, starting on January 4, unless the citizens of Auckland wake up, smell the cabbage and decide they've had enough of living like mushrooms - being kept in the dark and fed manure.

Auckland City Council's Christmas gift to its citizens: turning the clock back 1500 years before human footfall in Horotiu Swamp, aka Queen St. Auckland's main street will become a kind of outdoor museum, preserving the botanical past in its purest form.

For years I've been trying to work out why public plantings in Auckland were getting uglier. Bright, colourful, soul-enhancing plantings were being replaced by dour, grim browns and greens.

I started a file I called The Uglification of Auckland.

Auckland City Council was unable to lead me to the planners of this drabbing-down policy.

While private gardens continue to flaunt the benevolence of the Auckland climate, and Aucklanders' love of colour, the ubiquitous dull brown tufts of carex (sedge), dry and dead-looking, deaden the spirit.

Check the Ellerslie-Penrose interchange for what might be the world's ugliest public planting, presumably the work of Transit NZ.

I assumed that ease of maintenance was the guiding principle. But it appears not. After all, agapanthus, strelitzia and canna - that all flower bravely for months and require minimal maintenance - are not favoured any more for public planting.

If it were a matter of beauty or comfort or lifting the spirits we'd consider how Wanganui attracts tourists with its glorious hanging street baskets, how Cheltenham in England does the same with its gold and apricot begonias glowing from baskets around the town, and how Bern in Switzerland makes the most of three-tiered concrete planters with their profusion of fuchsia, geranium, petunia and lobelia. They are presumably less concerned to find the species that grew in that particular spot and use nothing else.

We could and should celebrate the South Pacific identity around Auckland, with a gorgeous array of hibiscus and jasmine, with lavishly flowering vines, with all the colour and warmth of the Pacific.

Nikau palms can look beautiful. Their sculptural form and colour are infinitely pleasing in the right natural setting - which is not a concrete canyon, with Victorian and Edwardian buildings. In such a location, it is the softening effect of leafy foliage that is required.

It is impossible to pinpoint the Agents Orange who are so keen to defoliate Queen St in what could be seen as a Pol Potty return to the biological Year Zero.

Councillors tend to duck for cover or express misgivings. The chief executive was, commendably, willing to talk, but doesn't know too much about planting matters.

Council officers - the planners, referred to in some websites as urban practitioners - appear to be the drivers.

Jo Wiggins, a planner, is the CBD project leader. We talked about the trees. It's a matter of philosophy, she said.

I asked her to send me a coherent statement of that philosophy. She sent me various council documents but none that provided a philosophy.

A word-search of the consultation documents available on the council website, showed not a single mention of the word "tree".

Neither did the document she sent me called Auckland's CBD: Together, creating your place, Into the Future: Action Plan 2004 to 2007. It's a very engaging document, but there's no mention of a tree.

People who see this as a despoliation of their city need to get their heads around planning issues such as the Biodiversity Strategy: "The more introduced species that contribute to species richness the lower the net biodiversity. This is because every place occupied by an alien plant or animal is displacing the former localised genetic forms, species and ecosystem food webs, with generally common worldwide types."

So out with the liquidambar and in with the cabbage tree.

Of course we should preserve and protect Auckland's indigenous species, but is a concrete canyon the right place?

Citizens need to ask about just whose vision is alluded to in the Tree Fact Sheet, December 22, 2005, which deputy mayor Bruce Hucker, a senior lecturer in planning, sent me: "The planting strategy for this project is part of a long-term vision to implement a native planting theme in much of Queen St and to replace exotics with natives over 10 to 20 years."

I was told that the exotic trees in Franklin Rd, Greys Avenue and Vincent St will be retained. So which other avenues of exotic trees will not be retained?

I would like to see such plans and visions made explicit to citizens, with genuine consultation.

People who enjoy Cornwall Park, the Domain, Albert Park and the general street and reserve environment of Auckland may like to know what the council's "vision" is for their planting.

And people who are concerned about matters of process in local government may like to check on the many issues concerning the cost of this exercise, and the consultation, resource consent and notification matters that remain unanswered.

As the mayor and councillors enjoy their holidays, thousands of troubled citizens wish they could enjoy theirs, without nightmares about abandoning beautiful trees to Chainsaw Dick, the cereal tree killer, and deputy Hacker. 


Beginners' guide to planner-speak  

Independent arborist: A man who has an untendered contract, awarded through "a partnership approach", to advise on the health of trees and replace all trees he deems unhealthy.

Upgrade: Defoliate.

South Pacific ambience: Flower-free and colour-free except for brown and green.

Seasonal variation: Changing green and brown non-flowering plants for other green and brown non-flowering plants.

Vibrancy: Pretending there is a stream and a foreshore in a concrete canyon.

Diversity: Two species of indigenous trees.

Biodiversity: Protecting the narrow range of local indigenous species by excluding others.

Democracy services: The people who tell you that the mayor's office accepts no calls from citizens.

Truly international city: A concrete Footrot Flats - you've got the Champs Elysees, St Kilda Rd and Dick's Cabbage-Tree Gully.

Much-loved iconic cabbage trees: The trees only a tiny percentage of Aucklanders choose to plant in their own gardens.

Beautification of Auckland: Uglification of Auckland.

It's a beautiful city on the outside. We have to make it beautiful on the inside as well (Mayor Hubbard): Leave taggers and boy-racers to do their worst while chopping down leafy trees.

Locations and conditions not suited to proper growth: Arguments offered by the tree judge, jury and replacer for the council's contractor to proffer, at the un-notified resource consent hearing, in favour of felling leafy trees and replacing them with a disease-prone species suited to swamps.

Representative democracy: How the deputy mayor reconciles ignoring the 50-to-one rejection of the tree plan.

Resource management: Making citizens jump through hoops to trim a tree in their own gardens while fast-tracking, over the Christmas break, a wholesale massacre of loved trees in the heart of the city.

* Lesley Max is a member of the Safer Auckland Executive.