Collaborating on trees: community involvement in plans for Highbury Fields

This summer, Highbury Fields Association and Highbury Community Association joined forces and produced a fully illustrated, thirty page booklet entitled Highbury Fields Trees. We have been pro-active in showing the local community groups’ continuing interest in participating in decision-making and caring for the park and we expect that this document will be used by Greenspace officers and by consultants engaged on plans for the park that concern the trees. In particular it is a response to Islington Council's 2007 Vision for Highbury Fields, published by the Council after long consultation. Our publication, with its thirty recommendations, has already contributed to the tree strategy for Highbury Fields currently under discussion.

In some areas, gaps in lines of planes need to be filled. In others, past over-dense planting will encroach on the much-loved openness of the park and some tree removal may be needed. There are also some more immediate problems: dogs stripping bark from trees and damage caused by grass trimming strimmers which wound the bark at the base of the trees and allow rot to set in. Both risk killing healthy trees.

The booklet is available to download as an Acrobat PDF, Highbury Fields Trees.pdf. This file is about 5mb.

Download here