planting trees on roads

The council at the city of Sheffield didn't seem to like trees on its streets:

Futures Forum: "Sheffield's tree massacre": How locals have battled to protect Europe's greenest city

But it makes good sense to plant trees right next to roads:

3 Reasons Why It is Important to Install Trees on the Roads

Benefits of Roadside Plantings

But what about planting trees on urban streets?

The group Treeconomics put this report together a couple of years ago:

GBU - Street Tree Cost-Benefit Analysis - 2018.pdf

Our mission: Sustainable treescapes for everyone

It is the goal and passion of Treeconomics to work to understand how trees improve our urban spaces, making them better places to live.

Home - Treeconomics

As used in the Sid Valley, Devon:

Sid Valley i-Tree Eco Survey - Treeconomics

Arboretum Towns.pdf

THE GUARDIAN 15 August 2015 Patrick Barkham wrote: “Our ‘urban forests’ can make us healthier, wealthier and happier”. …Trees on British streets lack any government department or national body to look after them.”

Tree Report | sidmoutharboretum.org.uk

Other places are embracing tree-planting - in a very new and clear context:

"The UK government has committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. As part of our overall response to this, Surrey County Council has committed to facilitate the planting of 1.2 million trees – one for every Surrey resident – by 2030."

And the council has put together a programme to make that happen - by encouraging people to plant trees next to roads:

Planting trees on the highway - Surrey County Council

For example:

Let’s fill our streets with trees - Start With Local

But, still, it's a challenge - which can be met, as the Start with Local group points out:

Street-trees can be expensive

Planting trees in streets can be expensive. Funnily enough, the tree is itself the cheapest component – a 3-4m high tree should cost your council £60-70, depending on species. The initial watering of a street-tree over 3 years is a massive £200-£250. Planting a tree in a grass verge may cost £100 but do so in a hard surface and you may be looking at £250, and more if you then get into engineered trees pit and tree guards. So, on average Defra estimates it costs about £600 to plant a street-tree. No wonder we’re not seeing a renaissance in street-trees, quite the opposite.

How to create a step-change?

At Start with Local, we’re working on a scheme to support the mass planting of street-trees – Trees for Streets...

Let’s fill our streets with trees - Start With Local

And here's the scheme, starting Easter 2021:

Trees for Streets - Let's fill our streets with trees

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