Help Save Stroud Green Plane Tree

Haringey Tree Protectors are looking for support to help save the 100-year-old Stroud Green Plane and other mature trees threatened in their unique conservation area by Haringey Council.

Despite weeks of community pleas with Haringey to find a solution to saving this veteran Plane tree, the council are moving ahead with the plan to fell it imminently.

Their community is against it, and residents near the tree are sympathetic to this protest. They have the wider support of ward councillors, but feel stuck between the council who say they don’t have the resources or will to challenge the claim and the demands of the insurers one of whom we have been told is Allianz Plc, one of the world’s largest insurers.

Conservation Area

Stroud Green, is in a Conservation Area and has a unique number of mature London Plane trees, which are of an incalculable amenity value to our community. Many of these trees are increasingly threatened by insurance companies and a Council who doesn’t seem to have a robust strategy to fight these claims and seems all too ready to capitulate.

Demands from insurers means the Tree Department will be forced into tighter pollarding cycles, including a practice called topping (removal of the crown of a tree) which can severely impact tree health. Pollarding too frequently and severely (stripping leaves and branches) reduces a tree’s ability to cool streets, disperse flood water, absorb carbon and provide safe habitats for birds and other species.

More than 30 trees are threatened in Stroud Green at the moment due to insurance claims, 20 on one street alone! The group are extremely alarmed at the prospect of gradually losing most of our mature trees.

Haringey’s and neighbouring boroughs’ housing is built on clay soil which swells and contracts more frequently than other sandy soils. As the Climate Crisis deepens, this impact gets much worse, meaning more cracks in our houses and buildings – at the moment trees are simply taking the blame for it. The tragedy is, it’s often easier and cheaper for Councils to fell trees.