Tree vandals strike in St Mary’s, yet again

Our Neighbourhood Care team is saddened to find that vandals have killed off a young tree in the St Mary’s neighbourhood, just three months after it was planted there.

The multi-stem silver birch tree planted on Egerton Street has been poisoned. Our team has assessed the damage and concluded that sadly the tree will not recover from the attack.

The tree was planted in March this year as part of our annual tree planting programme. We have invested £10,000 to plant 40 trees across the borough in FCHO-owned green space near main roads to enhance the appearance of our communities now and in years to come, and also deliver important environmental benefits to the local areas.

Thirty nine of the trees are thriving, but unfortunately not this one and we’ll take action if we find evidence of who carried out the malicious attack.

This is the second time a tree in the same location has been deliberately harmed. In 2017, our team discovered that the roots of a large ash tree had also been poisoned and killed, leaving us with no choice but to remove it.

David Wrigley, our Head of Neighbourhood Care: “We’re incredibly disappointed to see this sapling deliberately damaged. We work hard to improve the green spaces in our neighbourhoods – we know how important it is to our customers. This young tree – along with all the others on FCHO owned land – is an asset and provides lots of important benefits to people who live in the area, the wider borough and the planet.

“We know that many of our customers value the trees in their area and will be appalled by this vandalism, not to mention the environmental cost to the local area caused by the loss of the tree. We are planning to replace the damaged tree and we’ll be monitoring it closely.”

We are committed to providing and maintaining great places for our customers to live, and this includes looking after trees in our neighbourhoods.

Find out about our tree care and management schedule for trees.