Family pines for pre-tree property

A treasured Christmas custom of a well-known family has grown into a classic tree battle with Tauranga City Council.
Every summer from the mid-1960s, the entire family of Lockwood Homes founder Johannes La Grouw would gather at the Oceanbeach Rd bach and each Christmas a potted norfolk pine was purchased as a Christmas tree.
In those far-off days, the family's holiday retreat was a thinly populated outpost of Mount Maunganui.
No one thought about the consequences of planting out the pines around the third-of-an-acre section at the end of each festive season.
Eleven trees survived to grow taller and taller until they eventually became such an eye-catcher the council declared them protected.
There were no objections when three of the pines interfering with neighbours' homes were recently felled.
But it was a different story when the family's beneficiary owner of 35A Oceanbeach Rd, Corgi La Grouw, embarked on plans to develop the rest of the property.
The saga of a family's grown-up Christmas trees versus modern-day pressures to retain a treescape along Tauranga's development-mad coastline peaked at a council planning hearing yesterday.
Mr La Grouw, the son of Johannes and Johanna, decided six of the eight trees had to go to develop the property among the extended family.
Council planner Simon Park responded that not enough justification had been given to fell the six landscape trees. Alternative development options had not been explored.
Council arborist Brian Rickey said there was scope to retain at least four of the pines while still allowing the site to be developed - including the two trees the La Grouws wanted to keep closest to the beach.
Mr La Grouw said that in retrospect, planting so many large trees on a 1200 sq m site had been "an abysmal mistake". His parents were unaware that the pines had been given protection orders.
The trees, beautiful in their adolescence, now overwhelmed the site, created friction with neighbours, caused mosquito infestations from leaf mould and dank ground conditions, led to constant debris problems and occasional property damage from branches snapping off in storms.
Mr La Grouw said the council was depriving them of the opportunities and enjoyment to which they were freely entitled: "It should be our right to be able to remove these trees."
The fight had cost them $20,000, with the prospect of another $10,000 to go, he said.
Consultant landscape architect Rebecca Ryder said removing the six trees would cause no more than minor adverse effect on the landscape.
Planning consultant Richard Consultant Richard Coles said retaining the pines would limit development opportunities to 410 sq m and leave the driveway meandering among the trees.
Neighbours all supported removing the trees, although they had varying degrees of concern about the other aspect of Mr La Grouw's planning application - filling a large natural basin on the property to create two future development sites.
The council measures building heights from original ground levels and if the La Grouw family maximised the property's building potential once an estimated 60 truckloads of fill had been placed, the new homes would exceed nine metre height limits by up to 1.2m.
Mr Park told councillors that the trees imposed obvious restrictions on the use of the site. The council did not want to be seen as inflexible but the proposal had not reached a middle ground.
The committee reserved its decision.