Caring for Street Trees

We want people of all ages, across all of our communities, to get involved in caring for and valuing street trees. This will help to improve our shared understanding and raise awareness of the benefits and challenges that come from managing street trees.

Street trees are a crucial part of the city’s urban forest and provide numerous benefits including shade and shelter, introducing nature to otherwise barren areas, helping to clean the air and reducing the risk of flooding.

Street trees form an important and much loved part of the city’s tree stock that we want to improve, maintain and sustain for future generations to enjoy.

Street trees live a tough life and they need to be able to cope with drought, compacted soils, road salt and traffic pollution. We choose street tree species very carefully, to give them the best chance to thrive in their environment: close to houses, roads and people.

New street trees need to be watered for the first two years following planting. Watering takes place when the street trees are in leaf and demand for water is at its greatest. At peak times new trees need to receive 50 litres of water a week!

We encourage members of the public to carry out additional watering of new trees, especially during hot spells, to help give them the best possible chance of becoming established.

We also need eyes and ears on the ground, so if you see a problem with a street tree, you can tell us what’s wrong using this link.

Report a problem with a street tree