The garden growing season is well underway, with trees and shrubs flourishing in the summer weather.
Growth is shooting away left, right and centre, but there’s a growing problem in our neighbourhoods where the greenery along property frontages is spreading onto footpaths. This makes it difficult for people, especially those in wheeled mobility devices, to safely use the footpath.
The issue is widespread, so it’s not practical or cost-effective for us to visit and individually notify every property that has a problem, so we rely on our community to join us to deal with it.
If the situation is bad and we receive complaints, we can call in contractors to complete pruning at the property owner’s expense, but we’d rather that wasn’t the case and ask for your help in keeping footpaths clear.
Meanwhile, the Tasman Alliance is out and about trimming roadside trees, shrubs, and plantings across our rural roading network. They’re using tractors with trimming attachments called flail mowers to do the work, which is designed to maintain the vegetation-free envelope around our roads.
Trees and shrubs should be at least two and a half metres back from the side of the road, with overhanging trees no lower than five metres.