Fears the historic Napier Hill Cemetery could become treeless in the wake of ongoing felling work have been allayed by the council's parks and reserves manager, Tony Billing.
Historian and Napier Hill resident Peter Wells, who has researched many of the stories centred around the cemetery and who has carried out tours of the site, said he was surprised recently to see tree felling was continuing after such a long period.
Mr Wells said he had not come across the intentions of the cutting "or indeed any holistic idea of how this remarkable garden cemetery is to end up".
He was concerned the council had a vision of "those pallid characterless cemeteries all over New Zealand which lack a single living plant and hence evoke a reign of endless death".
Mr Wells feared the removal of trees would silence the bird and bee life and remove the character and shade of the cemetery.
"Is the overall aim to recreate a suburban cemetery in which all living things are removed and history can no longer speak?"
Mr Wells said he had been alerted to what was going on by a fellow gardener who had been told the contractors were removing two eucalyptus trees on the east side but that the work also included an acacia, a tall conifer and sundry smaller trees on the Western corner.
Mr Billing said there was no plan to drop all the trees across the cemetery landscape. "We are only taking all the big gum trees out."
He said the felling process had been part of a council agenda tabled nearly two years ago and focused largely on the gum trees as they had grown to the stage where there was potential for branches to fall, creating a human hazard as well as the potential to damage gravestones.
"It is purely a protection thing and there will still be plenty of trees left up there."
The work had been slow as contractors could only work at certain times and had to remove the giant gums branch by branch.
Mr Billing said the work was likely to be wrapped up in about three weeks "at the most".