Brian Rudman: Rules for everything - except trees that will block views

As we live increasingly cheek by jowl with our neighbours, officialdom endeavours to head off potential conlict with an expanding library of dos and don'ts.

Flicking through my free Auckland City Council report on what my neighbours are up to reminded me of how controlled our lives are. There are rules about everything from housing a few oldies for profit in the basement granny flat to storing dangerous goods in the garden shed. And just about everything in between.

Curiously, one of the few things you can do without permission is plant a kauri forest in the backyard that will grow up to block next door's sea views. At the risk of a kicking from the libertarians, such a gap in the local body rules and regulations does seem a bit remiss. Particularly when in my city at least, once a native tree reaches a height of 6m or a girth of just 0.6m (for exotics it's 8m and 0.8m), it becomes a protected tree.

In other words there are all sorts of rules and regulations controlling the size and height and mass of any new building you decide to erect on your property but nothing about a new tree or trees which can end up just as bulky and problematic to those living around them. My personal hate is not exactly next door. It's a norfolk pine that was planted several years ago as a landscaping gesture, during the development of a new petrol station around the corner from me.

No doubt it was the landscape architect's twee attempt to marry the ugly new concrete forecourt to the villas around, by planting a baby brother to a scattering of monster norfolk pines that have long dominated the slopes across the road.

But it was done with precious little forethought. If the public footpath doesn't succumb to the roots first, then my bet is the concrete forecourt will, and then the automated carwash nearby. After that, who knows? The underground storage tanks?

I read that these alien tropical freaks can grow 60m high, reaching 8m and spreading out 5m before their 10th birthday.

But in our increasingly in-filled suburbia, it doesn't take a norfolk pine to trigger problems. Just about any tree has the potential to upset.

When I approached an Auckland City spokesman, he reported back that tree planting on boundaries was not a planning issue but a civil issue and that people had taken court action in the past over "inappropriate" plantings. But leaving it to the lawyers does seems a rather pugilistic way of dealing with this problem.

I hesitate to suggest a list of approved suburban trees be drawn up, but it would add to neighbourhood harmony if tree planters, before they rushed to the garden centre and succumbed to the largest sapling going, were required, before planting anything with the potential to grow higher than a shrub to get the approval of neighbours likely to end up in the shade or leaf fall of the planned tree.

Talking of wanted and unwanted trees, several readers have asking about the large gap that has appeared in the ring of pohutukawa running along the old St Marys Bay clifftop above the harbour bridge approach road. There's intensive town-housing in the area and there were those of a suspicious nature wondering whether the collapse of one of the magnificent trees was in any way connected.

Auckland City publicist John Evans provided the following:

"The tree is on private land. It fell over a month or so ago with the canopy overhanging public land . There is no evidence to indicate that construction on the site was in any way responsible for the tree falling. It fell over after a very wet period.

"On June 7 a consent to prune was approved. Minor pruning will be undertaken by council to clear the lower branches. The pruning is being done by council because the canopy is over public land. Council arborists believe the tree will be saved."

Given the council's tenacity in cases such as the Royal Oak pohutukawa massacre, I'm willing to accept this verdict. I now look forward to its resurrection.