Perth Voice Interactive

VINCENT city council is under pressure to dump allergenic London plane trees, with claims they’re bad for health and make Perth look like every other city that plants them.

At this year’s council AGM, planner Jake Schapper urged the council to stop planting the trees saying they’re bad for health, give no sense of place and are ecologically painful (fauna and insects don’t like them, and their sudden dump of autumn leaves and seed pods can clog up waterways).

Mr Schapper, whose mum Alannah MacTiernan was Vincent mayor for a couple of years, went as far as to suggest the council pull out any plane tree planted in the past two years and replace them.

This week Mary Gray, a highly decorated conservationist from the Urban Bushland Council WA, joined the call.

“This is Perth, Western Australia, it’s not a mediterranean climate,” Ms Gray said. “We have our own trees to be proud of.”

Ms Gray said there’s no real bushland left in Vincent’s domain so the problem shouldn’t be compounded by planting more “weeds”.

Mayor John Carey says the council’s in a tough position when it comes to picking which trees to plant and it proves to be a surprisingly controversial issue: “As mayor I’ve received conflicting advice from both the community and my own team. The debate as I understand it comes down to: in really urban town centres where you’re trying to get a large canopy, there are those who argue that some of the native trees don’t cut it.” Getting enough available stock’s also proved a sticking point in the past.

He says he’ll put it to the environmental committee to figure out what to do.

“I do want an answer on this. If we can find an available native ever-green that we can use right in the town centre, then personally that would be my preference.”

by DAVID BELL