It is always hard to say goodbye to old friends. But sometimes it just has to be done.
For our 25th wedding anniversary Jessie and I gave each other a tree, which we thought was rather romantic and that they would make a horticultural statement in the back garden. Jessie’s gift to me was an Acer griseum, the Paper Bark Maple, and my gift to Jessie was an Acer davidii, the Snake Bark Maple. When we got them they were three or four feet high. 23 years later they were both well over 20 feet in height with a considerable spread. Although they were strikingly beautiful specimens, and over the years had given us a great deal of pleasure, we knew in our heart of hearts they were now too big for our garden. After much soul searching and prevaricating, we took the difficult decision to have them felled.
The dreadful chainsaw massacre day came the week before the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, a little bit of citizen science we have taken part in for the last several years. This was significant because we enjoy a good range of garden birds visiting us, in no small part, we believed, to those two trees. The birds used them as perches, a refuge and for feeding stations, as they were adorned with a variety of feeders. We were afraid their loss would have an adverse effect on the bird population but we need not have worried. The very same day the relocated feeders were in full use. A week later we completed the Birdwatch with decent results recorded.
We do miss the acers but we know we made the right decision to have them removed, and the space created has opened up a host of opportunities for new friends.
Tags: acer, chop, cut, tree