To have spent most of the day in tears over trees

[NoMoreTrees]

We moved into this house just shy of a year ago and I regretted it almost instantly. I absolutely hate it here, it has pretty much ruined my life and for the last few months my mental health has been in tatters and I’ve had some very, very dark days.

One thing I did like about the house though was that at the end of the garden, on the other side of the fence were some beautiful tall trees. Dozens of trees with hundreds of birds that you can hear singing all year round, an owl, squirrels and other wildlife. The trees ran the entire length of our row of houses and a bit further.

On the other side of the trees is a small field, and while we were having surveys etc done they brought up a planning application for a small development of 9 houses in that field, which had been rejected by the water company.

Well I’m sure you know where this is going… obviously the water company were offered more money changed their minds because before the sun was even up this morning a bunch of men in hi viz and hard hats rocked up with a chainsaw, a bulldozer and a woodchipper and one by one started tearing all the trees down. By the time they had downed tools and fucked off there was only one tree left standing at the end of our garden and one or two surviving further down… for now at least.

I just can’t stop crying. I can’t even bring myself to look out of the windows at the back of the house. All those beautiful trees, all those birds, all that wildlife, gone. It was one of the very, very few things that made living here tolerable, and now instead of trees and birdsong, there is going to be a building site. Just when I thought I couldn’t fucking hate it here more.

This is good advice. Plant your own oasis.

I absolutely empathise with this. Our neighbour chopped down a large tree last year and I cried about it for days. There was always bird in it, blue tits, long tailed tits, wrens, robins, so many others. I used to sit and just listen to their songs for ages. Then one day the chainsaw came out and it was gone. It took MONTHS for the birds to return and they only returned because we have a large tree in our garden. We're always getting comments from the neighbours about the leaves it drops. It's an oak. They can jog on though. I'd rather lose a limb than chop a perfectly healthy tree down. SO many people don't get it though, and "they're just trees, there's plenty of them" is too common a retort.
I'm so sorry for the loss that this has brought not only you, but the natural world x

Yep, humans are shit.
There is a garden behind me it is really overgrown with trees and I dread the day it gets cleaned up, I love listening to the birds.
Can you sell the property or rent it out and move on to improve your life. 💐

Do you have any neighbours with nice gardens? If you are not confident then as well as the garden centre maybe talk to them about what grows well and they might help you plant.

Get dimensions for the plot and which way it faces. Some plants prefer acid/not but I don’t know about trees. I soil test kit might be useful if not for trees then other plants you might grow. The garden centre should help you pick one suitable.

The spotlight should not be shining on your property. Let them know that it is unacceptable. No one has the right to shine a light directly on your house or garden.

You can complain to the council. It seems to be common practice to clear the land before planning is granted so developers can ignore the biodiversity rules - where I am developments are supposed to have a net gain to biodiversity so they just chop the trees down before submitting planning :/ Buu you have a record of what was there, so may be worth raising, you never know they may have to replace them. They may have left the others because of nesting birds, apparently with climate change birds are nesting for more of the year now so it's getting harder to do work on trees. If there are nesting birds you can make them stop work. But definitely raise it and check they have done things properly and it's not, see what you can do. If any of them have tree protection orders they would be in a lot of trouble.. you can possibly apply for TPO for the remaining trees...

Sorry to hear about the trees. However, nothing can be done now, except for you to plant preached trees that are a few years old. on your side of the fence as soon as possible. Good luck.

I completely sympathize.

Opposite our row of houses (and very busy road) was a very small area of scrubland, maybe even smaller than what a local petrol station would be on, with about 6 large trees that they cleared last year to build a row of 4 tiny houses. I used to leave my bedroom window open at night to hear the owl that would sit in the trees and call out long after all the traffic had died down.
And a few years back a neighbouring house had new owners who immediately cut down their one evergreen tree (I think it blocked the afternoon sunlight) and I actually secretly cried because for 4 years a blackbird had perched in it and sung his heart out each early evening… 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 (none in the same style/theme) instead, and I want it to be known: yes, I am judging that particular decision very hard.

Sorry OP. We are very urban but had trees (mostly bushes really, but lovely and including small trees) outside our flat which were ripped down by a developer in the Spring, a couple of years ago. Nesting birds and everything, which I thought wasn't legal but no-one I tried to report it to cared (and the trees were gone in any case). I cried for a day as well.

I'd be in tears too, OP. Can you still take action to save the remaining trees? And see if the local council will back you in asking for some restitution from the developers, for the massive loss of amenity to you and your neighbours. I would definitely contact your local councillor to complain about this. You weren't consulted or even warned that this was going to happen.

I would then get advice on good fast-growing trees to plant at the end of your garden. Preferably not the dreaded leylandii, which grows unstoppably! But even that would be better than a view of the barren waste beyond your fence.

Best of luck xx

I'm still in mourning for the huge pine tree my neighbor had removed a few years ago. It housed so much wildlife. I begged him to reconsider and he said it will give him more space for gardening. Tried telling him it wouldn't-the roots are deep and wide, can't get a spade in the soil, etc etc

Now several years later he says he wishes he hadn't taken it down.

If I saw a massive amount of trees come down I'd be very upset too. I'm sorry. You're not crazy to be sad about this 💗

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

I love this!

Do they actually grow?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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 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.