The destruction of a photographic treasure

[David Kilpatrick]

Kelso kirkyard has provided me with countless images. Over the last two days, the parks department has been cutting every single yew bush down to a stump. They will regrow, but it will be a generation or more before anything like the old pictorial landscape of the churchyard is restored.

yewpruning2-sml.jpg (423.47 KiB) Viewed 1872 times

This is the kind of scene we had last month - the yew trees make it, I would say:

snowykelso-7-sml.jpg (364.35 KiB) Viewed 1872 times

There will no doubt other photo opportunities as it changed, but the loss of maybe fifty of so mature yew bushes is sad.

David

[aster]

That 'they surely will regrow' is no consolation at all definitely.

They could have left the yew shrubs in moderate shape and height so that they would not look so tragically and carelessly cut off. They look 'soulless' now. In fact they could have cut them alternatingly so that the garden wouldn't look as though one big hazardous event deprived them off of their beauty, leaving behind a naked, flat piece of land...

Humanbeings don't consider other living species as much as their own selfish selves ...and they appear to be of the same type wherever they be around the world. Once they think that they are the only authority, come the hectic losses of cultural and natural heritage...

It's like "better be a king for a day and rule ruthlessly to prevail with power, than be an avarage person and be a picture of humane peace, beauty and sanity".

I'm sad that your test photos won't include the grand beauty of the yew shrubs for some notably long time into the future but I'm mostly sad for the people who lost their 'silent friends' that they walked past everday.

Yildiz

[KevinBarrett]

I took this ironic shot on Monday. Over a dozen similar stumps line the central fountain in front of the Conservatory visitor center. While they may only have been short-lived Bradford Pears, the stumps left behind don't explain the short lifetime of the tree.

[bakubo]

Yes, that is sad. I am assuming they had good reasons to cut them all way back, but maybe not. Last year in Honolulu the city department that does this sort of thing completely cut down a bunch of nice trees next to the convention center by mistake. I don't recall all the details, but I think they went to the wrong place and just started chopping trees down. The mistake wasn't discovered until after they were done. From quotes in the newspaper from the supervisors in the department they didn't seem to be too concerned about the screw-up either...until a public uproar sprung up.