The way we care for trees is a barometer of how much we care about the places we live, work and play in. Trees enrich our lives, keep us healthy, reduce pollution, provide shade and support wildlife. They remind us of our heritage and they will last long into the future.

It’s no surprise therefore that people care deeply about how treees are looked after, spend hundreds of volunteer hours planting and caring for them and get angry when they are needlessly felled.

Now, finally, Merton Council is to have a strategy for the trees that it owns. We’ve had sight of the draft and fed in our thoughts. You can read them below. There’s much to welcome but so much more that can be done.

The best strategies set out a vision, provide a plan for how to achieve it and put in place the resources for delivery. This draft Strategy only begins to provide this. It needs to commit to increasing Merton’s tree canopy not just to planting new trees, and to set an ambition well above the 10% target for London as a whole. It also needs to set clear deadlines for delivery and set out how both capital and revenue funding will be forthcoming from Council budgets, grants and other funding sources.

Trees are the responsibility of many Merton Council departments and what happens on our streets and in our green spaces is largely undertaken by contractors. Too often these different parts operate in conflict with each other. Some of the biggest tree losses in and around Cricket Green have been down to Merton Council itself.

The development of The Canons nursery will wipe clean an area which Merton Council’s own consultants recognise as being of “significant ecological value” and it threatens Merton’s Tree of the Year. Other mature trees have been needlessly felled in front of The Canons house and the new Mitcham Bridge has come at further needless damage to our tree canopy. On our streets tree pits have been tarmacked and trees lost to highway “improvements”. The new Tree Strategy is an opportunity to draw a line and bring the different parts of Merton Council together.

Its also important that the new Strategy is based on good data. The draft suggests Merton Council has no responsibility for shrubs and hedges barely get a mention. The data presented uses outdated ward boundaries and there is no record of Merton’s very special veteran trees or those which commemorate important events. More can be done by Merton Council to protect its own trees with Tree Protection Orders in both Conservation Areas and elsewhere.

The new Strategy can do more to tap into the love that local people have for trees. Tree Warden Group Merton, Friends and other like-minded groups do far more for Merton’s trees than many realise.

Many of us have seen or been involved in trees being planted. This is only the beginning. Those trees need to establish themselves, be pruned, mulched and above all watered in the first few years of their life and during the increasing number of dry spells. So much of this is done by volunteers and too much of it is made too difficult. Volunteers need access to taps, to mulch, to tools and to advice. Local people also undertake research, organise walks, prepare tree trails, nominate sites for new trees and use citizen science to increase our collective understanding. All this and more should be embraced by a Tree Strategy which puts community collaboration at its core.

Read our full submission on Merton Council’s draft tree strategy Merton Tree Strategy – response Nov 22