Love Letters To Melbourne’s Trees
“Dearest Golden Elm”, wrote one correspondent earlier this month, “I finally found you! I see you every day on my way to uni, but I had no idea of what kind of tree you are. You are the most beautiful tree in the city and I love you.” ~ “A.”
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A Christchurch variegated elm
I have — much against my will with Daughter of Blood being published on the 26th/27th and The Chaos Gate (The Wall of Night Book Four) a work in progress — gotten dragged into the “Recovery” planning process for Christchurch’s significant (Heritage and Notable) trees. (It’s complicated so I may leave fuller explanations to another day.)
But as a result of this, someone I haven’t even met emailed me a link to a wonderful BBC article, which I hope you will also take time to read. 🙂
As the article says, because of prolonged drought, Melbourne City has actually mapped all the trees in the city, assigning each of them an individual tree ID and allowing residents to interact on a digital platform. The Council thought this would be for reasons of maintenance, but …
“It was then that something extraordinary happened. Instead of identifying a tree in need of attention and emailing the council to get it done, people in Melbourne began sending personal messages to the trees.”
Apparently in the past two years individual trees have received over 3000 emails! As I say in my title, love letters to the trees. 🙂
The lead quote is an example of one of them. Here’s another, from an expatriate Australian:
“I miss you, Gum. I miss all that you represent for me. Stand tall and strong, and know that my heart reaches out to you across the seas.”
I think it’s a great human — and tree! — article. To get the whole story and see more emails to the trees, click on:
The Melbourne treemail phenomenon
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Local oak avenue
This is so wonderful, it made me weep! (I have just woken from night shift but whatever). I lived in Melbourne for 15 years and I had a favorite gum tree on my walk near the Melbourne zoo, I will look it up pronto. Thanks for sharing Helen. Nearly finished re re re reading book one…….
I loved the whole idea, too — not least having a Council and a community that both seem to really care about their city’s “tree-ed” character. I loved the expatriate Aussie’s paean to the gum, as well as the UK visitor’s deep appreciation for the continued existence of elms. Unfortunately dutch elm disease has reached NZ now (despite our supposed budget cuts in border control protections “not affecting frontline effectiveness” so no doubt we, too, shall soon be elm-less. 🙁
Terrible lot of lies they keep telling us up there in Wellington. They must really think we a stupid.