A group of residents organise street trees in Hansford Square

Bath needs many more trees. They reduce air pollution, absorb carbon dioxide and keep our streets shaded and cool. I spent a delightful hour learning about the street trees in Hansford Square, Bath.

Logo design for the project by Laura Sheppard

The suggestion came to Jan Dickinson back in Spring 2020. Someone who had been involved with having street trees planted in Bathwick, put it to Jan, that it would be good to have trees in Hansford Square. This was during the Covid lockdowns and we had a social WhatsApp group to help neighbours in the Square keep in touch. Jan put the idea onto that group, to see if anyone was interested. The six of us piled in, and we were off! When the lockdown “rule of six” was in force, we were pleased there weren’t seven of us, as we could meet in gardens.

We created a new WhatsApp group dedicated to the trees project and a Google email account so that people could contact us about it.

Checking reactions

Our first action was to send a simple questionnaire to everyone in the Square, over 150 households. We sent it by email to most people and delivered paper copies to those who did not use email. The questionnaire had a few sentences explaining the idea and then asked:

Are you in favour in general? Yes / No / Comments
Would you be happy for a tree outside your house? Yes / No
Any other comments?

That meant we were able to map out every house from the replies:

In favour, but not by my house.
In favour, and certainly by my house.
Not in favour. Don't want it.

People had a lot of concerns. Would the trees damage drains? Could a wheelchair get past? Would leaves be a problem? Would there be too much shade? Won’t the Council just do it anyway? Will the Council look after them or will we be left to pick up the pieces?

By this time, we had involved Mark Cassidy, who was the Tree Officer for BANES. We shared the results of the questionnaire and all the concerns and questions with Mark. He arranged to knock on every door with us and talk to people. We even included people who'd given a blanket “no” to the idea except for one or two who were fairly fierce on the WhatsApp group. It was freezing. We were still in lockdown when we went round that first time, so we had to be careful. We had to let people know that we would be wearing masks. There would only be two of us. We would not come into their house. We would step back from the doorway to have the conversation because it was important that people didn't feel invaded.

We were going over a lot of the same ground about the roots and might they damage pavements and utilities and also the nature of the trees and the shade and the potential mess with leaves. Mark as Tree Officer described again and again the very specific nature of the trees chosen. He showed pictures to illustrate how big they might grow. He said they were specifically for streets like ours and they would have an upright manner. They would not be spreading trees.

We were also making efforts to make sure we were completely approachable and it was easy to contact us directly, publicly, by e-mail or anything.

Finding the money

Mark wrote applications to various trusts and organisations to get money for our trees and he was able to get a grant from the Forest of Avon Trust (forestofavontrust.org). The critical thing was that the money did not come from BANES and from Council tax. That was one of the bits of information that we had to convey to people in the Square. The grant was sufficient to buy the trees and take out the contracts for digging the holes and planting.

More planning and talking

We did our own surveys, checking out where existing trees and lampposts were. Mark produced maps of the routes of gas and electric and water supplies and everything else, so we knew what to avoid.

The majority of the houses are semis. The design was to go for the midpoint between a pair of semis so the trees were not right in front of somebody's sitting room. And obviously there are places where there are dropped curbs all the way along the front and then it's more difficult. There were certain sites where a tree couldn't go because there was a telegraph pole or another tree in the garden.

Mark was guiding all that as well and he was very persuasive. There were just one or two people who were absolutely blanket “no.” But then there were other people who'd said “no” on the survey, who actually were persuaded to reconsider once they had a discussion about it.

At this point we had the draft plan. We assured people that this wasn't the final design, just a proposal. We directed people to Mark Cassidy as well, and we responded to all of them individually, one-to-one just to let people know that it wasn't set in stone. If there was a tree outside your house on this proposal, you had time to say no.

Seeing people one-on-one, we also tried to help between neighbours on the basis that at no point should we be responsible for damaging people's relationships. We were absolutely certain we needed to work hard to make sure that didn't happen. If one neighbour was really keen to have a tree and the other was really anxious or worried about it, we tried to renegotiate its position. Once or twice people came back to say thank you very much for listening.

There were one or two people who were extremely distressed and that was difficult, so we needed to accept that we wouldn't put that tree there. We were aiming for fifty and we ended up with 41.

In November we were able to finalise the plan.

The trees arrive

The next step was to mark the spots on the pavements for the tree pits (the holes the trees are planted in). We went round with the new Tree Officer (Mark had moved on) but she couldn't do the last three because the paint spray ran out. We were terrified they’d be forgotten so we went and marked them ourselves. A year after we began, the tree pits were all marked out.

Then we had to get together to celebrate!

We waited and waited for the trees to arrive. We looked out every day and finally, around the 24th March, they came to dig the pits. The people doing the digging loved being in Hansford Square, because we were very hospitable. We gave them tea and biscuits. We let them use the loo. They dug the holes and backfilled them to keep the pedestrians safe until the trees arrived.

We made a planting plan of where the different trees should go. We had told people in the Square about the types of tree – a mix of varieties of Prunus, Sorbus, Betula, Magnolia, Crataegus and Malus – and that they would be planted in a sort of random layout. Unless anybody had really strong views, we weren't going to let people choose their tree. We explained that the whole purpose of mixing them up was that if one species of tree got a disease, we didn’t want to risk losing all the trees in a row. By and large people were happy.

So, we had the plan ready for when the planters arrived. They did suggest a couple of changes, especially with the Betulas which are lofty and might clash with telegraph wires. After the planting we had The Tree Tour. We encouraged everyone to walk with us and have a glass of wine to celebrate.

Although they have only been in a short while, the trees are amazing. Prunus Snow Goose has lovely early white blossoms, which we’ve seen this year. Prunus virginiana ‘Schubert’ has pink blossoms now. Sorbus aucuparia ‘Joseph Rock’ has the most glorious scent. Prunus serrulata ‘Amanogawa’ starts with green leaves, then blossoms and then the leaves go purple. The woman who has it outside her house said: ‘Oh, I’m so lucky!’.

Still work to do

We asked people to volunteer to water a tree near them. We needed to make sure that every tree had somebody to look after it. We suggested two full watering cans once a week, more if it was really hot, so they would get a good drenching, not a drip every day.

We lost one tree on a narrow bit of road. A lorry hit it, even though it had a protective cage around it. There’s been a bit of vandalism: leaves pulled off, that kind of thing. But it’s not been too bad.

Mike, Christine’s husband, has been a great help sorting out problems such as a supporting post needing adjustment or a strap cutting into branches. He also attached insulation foam to some of the cages that were rubbing against the trees. We need to look after these trees as well as if they were in our gardens.