Mulch ado about nothing

Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor

It has come to my attention that Ballarat council’s tree maintenance department is playing a dangerous game spraying the entire root line of trees with now questionable poisons.

The same poisons that are banned in France and a council worker in California has been awarded the budget of Ballarat council many times over for being exposed to these chemicals.

Maybe that is a precedent Ballarat council cannot fight! Speaking to one of their own arborists, after we got into a conversation about the dead zone it created for insects that have a symbiotic relationship with the tree (notwithstanding insect numbers worldwide are down 70 per cent) he said the best method would be mulch instead of spraying.

Flowering eucalyptuses create their own mulch and drop their gumnuts for weed control.

Now that the entire tree population has been sprayed there is only one way forward and that is to add mulch yearly when the poison has subsided and after a few years the surrounds will begin to become a natural environment, again.

Trevor McKenna

Newington