Don’t be a dendrophobe!

Dendrophobia is a strange disease that induces its sufferers to cut down beautiful trees in their gardens, but don’t succumb to it, says Allen Paterson

- Allen Paterson

ONE of the commonest diseases in Britain is dendrophobia. Defined as a morbid dread of trees, this is evidenced by phenomenal sales of secateurs, pruning saws and axes while the resultant amputated stumps can be seen in many front gardens. If these are typical, it is a relief for the sensitive passer-by that most back gardens are out of sight.

This is a pity, to say the least; trees can soften or even conceal indifferent architecture yet enhance that which is good as nothing else can. They give scale, add texture and provide – if the word is not too ambitious – beauty. They do this, by their mere existence, for much more than their flowering period.

Yet in spaces more than ample for a medium-sized tree, an almond may be reduced to a clothes prop or a laburnum to a maimed wreck pathetically pushing out annual twigs. Obviously, over-large species should not be chosen for small gardens. But where – in a town courtyard, perhaps – a big tree has been permitted to develop, the effect can be superb even at the expense of some light to lower rooms.

It is not easy, nor would it be right, to generalise on a subject that has such a great effect upon the lives of those who make the planting decision, and often others as well. But I appeal for careful, conscious thought on the subject.

Over-eager pruners are repelled