To have spent most of the day in tears over trees

I'm so sorry, OP. I would be devastated too.

As others have said, you could create a beautiful garden and haven for wildlife where you are. I know solutions can seem minimising when you feel rubbish, but if you are able, you. could be the creator of so much joy for our native creatures.If you don't stay, they will still benefit. I'm just thinking about the quote about elderly men planting trees from which they will never get to enjoy the shade. Their gift to the world.

Good luck ❤️

I hate our bastard govt, they have enabled this, ripping up planning law.

@NoMoreTrees @peachescariad This would devastate me as well. I absolutely feel your distress. I remember when I came home to find the council had lopped all the sycamores in a bit of 'wild' land at the bottom of my garden (outside of the fence). To be fair, they were a bloody nuisance and had grown unchecked for years. But the sudden absence of the leafy canopy and the lack of opportunities for birds, even the noisy crows and jays, was a punch in the gut.
i absolutely cannot get my head around why developers etc can just chop down beautiful, mature trees that are critical habitats. They need more protections, not less. 💐🥺

@NoMoreTrees It is heartbreaking when trees are removed, but from your photo they do look like mostly conifers of some sort or another. For the area they take up they really don't offer that much for wildlife.

I would have a look at the planning application to see if the trees were meant to be protected, and if they were you can let the planning it department know what has happened. They will hopefully be able to do something.

In the meantime, even if you only plant a few trees and shrubs that will help the birds and other wildlife.
A couple of trees I would suggest to plant are silver birch and hawthorn. We have a small copse of 5 silver birches, all planted close together (maybe just under a metre apart) to try and keep them smaller, and the birds love them. Ditto the hawthorn. If you plant them in your garden you have control over what happens to them.

If you can, try and find the positive in where you are living. It might not be what you want but you can try and make it work for you and your family. I hope you are able to get some plants in and get your previous view back, or an even better one 🌳

Oof. When I started reading I thought “how bad can it be?” Then I saw the photos 😱 that’s absolutely awful they have done that!! What the hell. Can you afford some new trees to be put in your garden? There’s some really fast growing types.

I'd be devastated too. I live opposite a park and a few trees have been felled there over the years. It's upset me every time. But try to look on this as an opportunity. You have space at the end of your garden for trees. Some are very fast growing (like rowan or birch) and you could also have something like an apple or pear tree. It's wonderful to see them growing and you're doing something for future generations.

@NoMoreTrees I know exactly how you feel. A house two doors down from us had a similar row of beautiful tall trees like this- in the summer looking out at the back windows they were so lovely. This summer after years they were all chainsawed down in one afternoon. Now I look out of the back windows and see brick houses. I still miss them, but visually you do get used to the new view over time.

@evtheria

The new neighbour next to them removed a cherry tree that was clouds of pink each year, and installed about 5 different artificial garden features

People like this shouldn't be allowed to have gardens!

Awful but you have a great plot. Build your own oasis and focus on the good. Research and design your garden - plenty here will share their knowledge and create your own haven.

However long you think you’ll stay it’s worth planting saplings down the end of your garden now. Wildlife will benefit most from a mix of native trees. Hazel grows very quickly, as does Elder and both cope with neglect so good for inexperienced gardeners. Don’t worry about buying more mature trees, bare root saplings catch up quickly and they are cheap right now and perfect time to plant.

I live in an urban area but I like walking. Quite a few places where I walk are now earmarked for development. Really sad.

I share your sorrow.

Our garden was bordered by our trees on one side, a neighbour's tree, an admittedly overtall hedge at the end, and the next fence but one on the other side was a lovely privet that blocked the view of tower blocks and the pub.

All of it is gone now for various reasons and I'm sad whenever I go into my garden.

One of my criteria for my next garden is that I need to know that I'm in control of a reasonable amount. I don't even need the trees, I just couldn't bear to lose trees again because some other prick chose to do it.

Go and politely ask them to change the angle. The school opposite me installed a spotlight that blinded me as I went out my front door. I explained the problem and they adjusted it.

I think this is one of those times where you have to allow yourself to be sad but put a time limit on it. For eg, you could say, I’ll allow myself to feel all the painful feelings on this for the next ten minutes, then I will stop and think about something else.

Then you have to do the hard work of rebuilding your mental strength and health.

Count the good things. The good things each day. The good things in the house and garden.

Look at what you can control. Decide your next action. Do that.

Planting trees in your own garden is something you can control,

It’s tough, but if you can’t move your choices are sink further into misery, or start to make changes in how you are dealing with things.

My life has been hell after hell for years. I’ve have to learn strategies to cope or I’d be dead. And I can’t be dead as I have kids. So learning how to cope has been the only option.

The world seems to divide quite sharply between those who love the natural world deeply and those who don’t give a toss about it and just want trees, birds, wildlife to get out of their way.

This is exactly the sort of situation that would drive me to despair as well.

You say you already hated the house before this act of environmental vandalism happened. I’m worried that the effort and time it would take to plant your own trees would simply take too long, time spent enduring life in a place where you are very unhappy. We once bought the wrong house - I knew I’d made a terrible mistake the day we moved in. After we moved in, house prices dived, and stayed down. But we moved anyway, lost a load of money on the sale, everyone thought it was crazy.

I have never regretted leaving that house for a minute. Our finances probably never really recovered, but my state of mind, and the atmosphere at home, improved massively. If at all possible, never stay in a place you hate.

We now have a tiny house and tiny garden where nature in all its variety is welcome.

Devastating, so sad for you. I find this interesting though...we are currently waiting for a planning application to be decided upon for a sunroom and a second storey extension at our property. We live rurally with fields on all sides and a large garden and the extensions will cover a very small percentage of the curtilage and have no impact on neighbours as we don't have any within quarter of a mile.
The planners have come back and asked for our green infrastructure plan...to offset our development. They suggest tree planting, bird boxes, bat boxes, ponds, bug hotels, log piles, wildflowers etc etc. Now as it happens we have carried out extensive nature improvements anyway including, amongst other things, planting trees, native hedging, wildflower banks and two ponds plus have a bat colony in the attic which won't be disturbed....these plans are public record for anyone who cares to look. At the moment we don't know the outcome but they have been pretty pedantic about it!
I'd suggest looking up the application online and seeing what their green offset is...it won't bring trees back but here may well be something to replace them with native species or other improvements.
Last thought though, we are in Wales so maybe different rules.
Again, feel very sad for you and your environment but get your green fingers on and try to improve your garden as well x

That's devastating OP - I'd be in tears too 😢.

Check with your local council - we had something similar and according to the council they'd broken various rules including inappropriately doing work on trees/hedges between October and March. (Rules are different for domestic gardens and developers). The council made them do a few things which obviously didn't replace the lost area but at least there were some consequences for the developer.

I was also really upset about it at the time, it was horrible seeing the birds flying around confused. But it was quite a while ago and those feelings have passed.

You have my sympathies OP. This happened behind my last house. We backed onto a little field full of trees and loved being surrounded by birds, hedgehogs, bats and watching the moon move across the night sky. The housing estate that was built ruined all that for us.

I love this!

Do they actually grow?

I’ve bought a couple before and they just fit but I’ve never planted them outside.

Where I used to live we had a beautiful, very old tree that overhung the edge of the neighbouring housing association's land. It was nowhere near their blocks of flats, just shading a pathway at the edge of the land. Without any warning they sent a man one day to cut the tree back to our fence. That killed it, of course. Bastards.

I went berserk when I came home and found the disaster, and was quite surprised about how they lied about having informed us in advance, and that the shade from our tree encouraged drug dealers to hang round there! All bullshit. I contacted the local newspaper, which printed pictures of the lovely tree in bloom. I got onto local councillors and put in a complaint to the housing association's head office, naming the people who had lied to me. The housing assoc eventually agreed to pay for some gardening at the local community centre in recompense, so at least some good was salvaged. Lying bloody vandals, though.

Oh no that's bad. Awful. The best thing you can do is be proactive and get some trees in the back of your garden now. Or wait till winter and get them bare rooted. They won't cost much. Just still them in. Research which ones are best for wildlife. I know it will take ages for them to grow as big as the last lot but at least you are doing something. Next I suppose you need to make a list of simple improvements you can make to make your house a place you enjoy. What don't you like about it?

You're not being unreasonable at all, however you should have realised that planning application wasn't going to go away and, at some point was likely to be granted.

Look like yew to me but if you are right then it would be a shame indeed that they were felled.

We had the same opposite our house, a few years a go during really high winds a tree came down and I cried to my husband (I seem to spend a lot of time crying about trees thinking about it lol) because a blackbird did the same. His evening song was so so beautiful. We are lucky that our street does have a fair few number of trees lining it, and in 2024 the council actually planted more!

The house I grew up in had a dwarf cherry in the middle of the lawn, and it would always blossom late. My birthday is the 18th of April and it would always blossom around then so growing up, it was like it blossomed for my birthday. When my parents sold the house, the buyers chopped it down :(

If I win the lottery or ever come into a substantial amount of money (unlikely sadly), I'm buying a house in the middle of nowhere with enough land to plant as many trees as I desire, and no one will ever be able to chop them down.

Op grow native English Ivy along your bottom fence. In a few years, it will mature and attract a vast wealth of nature. We've had a mating pair of blackbirds raising young in ours for a few years and it's lovely. Daddy blackbird in particular is not scared of me, and will hop close when I'm gardening. Not to mention the bees and butterflies mature ivy flowers attract.