I have long been puzzled by the inflexible attitude some local government authorities and conservationists have to non-native trees. They seem to regard them as noxious plants that have to be eradicated wherever possible. Recently, this attitude manifested itself in my own town, Hamilton. Now, Hamilton has a creek running through it, called the Grange Burn, along which deciduous trees were planted by schoolchildren in memory of soldiers killed in World War I. Over time these matured, and many seedlings and suckers sprang up beneath them. The visual effect created by these trees, with their summer greens and autumn reds and golds, was always one of the town’s attractions. The trees also provided cool shade in summer. Then, a few years ago, the local council and the district’s Catchment Management Authority decided between them to poison and remove all the non-native trees along the creek. These were mainly elms (Ulmus spp), oaks, weeping willows (Salix babylonica), poplars (Populus spp), ash (Fraxinus spp) and pines. As far as I could tell from various inquiries I made, the primary reason for removing them was that the trees were ‘exotic’—that is, they were not natives.
I could not follow the logic here. What was so terrible about non-native trees, I wondered, that they had to be exterminated? After all, trees like these were planted in Hamilton when the town was first established. They are linked with the town’s early history. Moreover, most of Hamilton’s non-native trees today are growing not along the creek but in private gardens, where, I am sure, they will continue to grow happily for as long as the town survives. So why go to the trouble and expense of removing the relatively few non-natives growing along the town section of the creek? In any case, few if any of the ‘native’ trees planted in Hamilton’s parks and gardens are indigenous to the area, so it could be argued that they are exotic, too.
I went to the Catchment Management Authority’s office in Hamilton to ask about it all. The officer I spoke to told me that exotic trees were weeds and that weeds had to be removed. ‘Our policy is to remove all exotic trees in our catchment,’ she said. ‘They are all weeds and they will all be taken out as funding allows.’ She explained that these ‘weeds’ reduced water flow in the creek, creating perfect conditions for blue-green algae blooms. I told her that, if this was the authority’s policy, then the authority had gone completely mad. It should be obvious to anyone, I said, that the source of the blue-green algae and many other problems in Lake Hamilton was in the creek’s upper catchment, where the creek was not protected and where sheep and cattle grazed in fertilized paddocks right to the creek’s banks. ‘That’s the part of the creek you should be concentrating on,’ I told her. ‘Forget about the bit that runs through the town; that’s harmless by comparison.’
I got nowhere. Later, I learned that a number of deciduous trees around a bridge would be spared. Why? So they would continue to provide a nice backdrop for wedding photos. In fact, as I write this, most of the trees in line for removal are still there. Happily, it seems the funds have not been available to allow the removal of the trees to go ahead. Long may the lack of funds continue.
Having said all this, I obviously have a strong preference for planting native trees on farms—ideally trees that are indigenous to the local area—over introduced trees, including deciduous ones. One reason is the relative ease with which they can be planted. Elsewhere in this book I describe the process of direct seeding, which makes it possible for one person to plant large numbers of native trees quite rapidly. Another reason is cost: native trees when bought in sizeable numbers are nearly always a lot cheaper than non-natives. A third, extremely important reason is that native trees provide a habitat for Australian wildlife, especially birds. A fourth reason is resilience: native trees naturally do better in our climate and environment than most introduced trees. For one thing, they need little if any watering.
The main reason I favour native trees, though, is that they really offer our only hope of revegetating the Australian landscape. It should be obvious to everyone that a successful restoration of the Australian landscape, which more than anything requires revegetation on a large scale, cannot be achieved by planting, say, hundreds of thousands of oaks or desert ashes. Only native trees can be planted successfully and in large enough numbers to do the job—and only native trees can create a landscape that looks Australian. I consider this last point to be extremely important.
Wattles are very effective at revegetation, both because of the speed with which they grow and their capacity to regenerate. As mentioned, I have a personal liking for black wattles if only because they are the pioneer wattles in my own area. Cicely, though, has a special fondness for Cootamundra wattles (Acacia baileyana), so we invariably included a few of them in each planting. About ten years ago, someone with an interest in trees was visiting us at Lanark when he happened to notice that we were growing Cootamundra wattles. ‘What are you doing growing those things?’ he asked, ‘Surely you know they’re an environmental weed in this district.’ I replied that, yes, I knew they were regarded as weeds, but I had not found them to be a problem at Lanark. In any case, of all the trees we have planted at Lanark only one in one thousand have been Cootamundras.
My visitor remained unimpressed. ‘It’s still wrong to plant them,’ he said. ‘It’s bad practice.’ I replied that, whether or not that was true, the Cootamundra wattle was my wife’s favourite tree and if I did not plant Cootamundra wattles she might leave me—or stop helping me plant other trees, as she once threatened to do—so I have kept planting them.
I began this chapter by arguing there was a place for exotic trees in Australian towns. What about Australian farms? Is there a place for them there, too? Certainly there is. For one thing, they have enormous visual appeal when suitably planted. Deciduous trees offer another advantage: they retard fires. They do this by absorbing radiant heat.
Finally, let me say a special word in praise of one exotic tree in particular—the oak. In the higher-rainfall areas of southern Australia, the oak is one of the best deciduous trees an Australian farmer can plant. It also happens to be a personal favourite of mine. Oaks are trees that Australians tend to associate with Europe, especially England. You imagine them growing in cool, moist forests—a far cry from hot, dry Australia. The reality is that oaks grow well in some areas of Australia. Young oaks put down a deep tap root which is not unlike a eucalypt’s. I have planted a large number of oaks at Lanark with close to complete success. Indeed, I have planted a small forest of oaks which is now around sixteen years old. I watered the oaks after planting, but that was all. There was no follow-up watering whatsoever, yet they all flourished.
It happens that one of Australia’s leading experts on oaks is a near neighbour of mine, a twenty-minute drive away, near the village of Dunkeld, which lies almost at the base of the Grampians, the tail end of the Great Dividing Range. His name is Bill Funk, and I believe his family has been in the Dunkeld district since the mid-1800s. Bill and his family produce fine wool of high quality on around 1400 acres (560 hectares), which is more than enough to keep them busy, but over the years he has somehow found the time to collect trees from around the world, some of which are extremely rare. At last count, he had more than 200 species of oaks, easily the biggest collection of oaks in Australia. His contribution to our oak plantings at Lanark was immense. He was also the driving force behind the establishment of the Dunkeld Arboretum, which has become one of the district’s chief tourist attractions. I view him as an ideal farmer: one whose expertise at farming is matched only by his love of trees.
Bill Funk speaks of trees ‘occupying space’, which I think is an excellent way to express a basic concept. He once came to Lanark to inspect a trial planting of trees that had been pruned and thinned by the scientist conducting the experiment. I said, ‘They’re not looking good, Bill.’ He replied, ‘Well, John, he’s done the wrong thing. He’s thinned them before they occupied the space, so you might as well start the trial again.’ He meant by this that the trees had been thinned—and therefore opened to the wind—before they had really established themselves and occupied the space they were meant to occupy.