are more likely than not killed by those seeking to enhance views and, accordingly, property values.

When there are no water views, the next reason is “leaves”, then “property damage” from branches, roots, leaves in gutters, “bird poo”, “solar panels”, “insects”, “sap”, “don’t like the look of it”, “gets in the way of my mower” and/or “it’s killing the grass”, the list goes on…

These are all paraphrased complaints about trees. It’s a hyper-common thing that trees are intentionally killed in the urban landscape. Unintentionally is usually ringbarking by whippersnippers and that kills just as many, if not more. Shame that well-treed suburbs actually increase property values but then removed of individuals do their best to ruin that, it’s probably the main character syndrome.

The novelist and celebrated nature writer James Bradley says the “hatred of trees” is a settler-colonial legacy of the desire to impose order on the natural landscape and a symptom of increased alienation from nature.

“Trees have helped shape and sustain human cultures for hundreds of thousands of years. Many Indigenous cultures recognise this with systems of reciprocity that connect them to trees, within which trees are not just living beings, but actually relatives or kin. That connection has been disrupted by the processes of extraction that have seen most of the world’s forests cleared, and the hostility to trees you hear when people complain about their messiness, or them blocking their view,” he says.

“The more science learns about trees, the more we realise that even though they exist upon quite different timescales to humans, they are beings, with the ability to communicate and learn. And that they aren’t just good for the environment, they’re good for us, and just being around them makes us calmer, improves our mood, and makes us feel more connected to the world around us.”