Canberra's leafy suburbs 7 degrees cooler than treeless hell?

wont some one think of the solar panels we love our sun

poetix said :

At the risk of saying ‘how about this heat?’ I would point out that my *two* bedroom house is cooler than absolutely nowhere today.

Including Mercury.

Trees can only do so much.

AIS pool is calling.

Yes – unless trees are sufficiently large, and close to the house (and in the right position) they don’t make that much difference to the heat inside – and once the sun is down, little difference at all.

Tempestas said :

The really interesting bit here is that it would suggest that using deciduous trees for street trees is the better outcome for livability of an urban environment.

Plenty of main roads and nature parks where native ever greys can be planted, suburban streets should have deciduous trees as far as possible.

The cultural cringe against exotic trees needs to end. Street trees should provide shade in summer not heavy branch’s that fall off as it’s a bit hot/dry.

Air raid siren
slap of eucalyptus
nostrils twerking

I’d like to thank ACTEW in advance for cutting my power supply on Saturday when it is expected to be 40 degrees.

Staff and customers must be thrilled you continue to go ahead with work under such temperatures rather than reschedule them for a day more suitable.

Chop

The really interesting bit here is that it would suggest that using deciduous trees for street trees is the better outcome for livability of an urban environment.

Plenty of main roads and nature parks where native ever greys can be planted, suburban streets should have deciduous trees as far as possible.

The cultural cringe against exotic trees needs to end. Street trees should provide shade in summer not heavy branch’s that fall off as it’s a bit hot/dry.

At the risk of saying ‘how about this heat?’ I would point out that my *two* bedroom house is cooler than absolutely nowhere today.

Including Mercury.

Trees can only do so much.

AIS pool is calling.

Yeah nature strips where all the nice old trees have been planted seem to be getting smaller and smaller or in many cases non-existant.

It’s a shame as many of Canberra’s new suburbs look identical to those in greater western Sydney. It’s all in the name of revenue for both the govt and developers.

HiddenDragon said :

. . trees certainly seem to make a difference to the actual and perceived temperature. I just think it’s unfortunate that we can’t have a more balanced approach to the use of trees in this town – on the one hand, we have at times, preservation to the point of what seems like zealotry and on the other, stark, sterile brutalist developments where any token greenery is like a sprig of parsley on a baked buffalo.

+1

Wow, WTC. Not fond of Autumn leaves much huh?

Here’s what I do: some end up as mulch on garden beds (though not around the trees they came off — a disease risk). By this time of year they have pretty much all decomposed.

Some go into the chook pen as litter.

But the bulk go into a contained pile for making leaf mould, which is a great soil conditioner. I use a wire cage in a discreet corner of the yard to do this. But you can put them in a plastic garbage or yard bag with slits. Dampen them a bit when they dry out. Several months later, with very little work involved, you can dig the resulting material — which basically looks like its name, and smells pleasantly mushroomy) straight into garden beds — improves water retention in the soil enormously.

If you want to speed up this process, run a mower over the leaf pile a few times before bagging them.

I also regularly dip into the caged leaves as a carbon source for my compost bins. Why not compost the lot, I imagine you are all immediately thinking? Because leaf-mold is seriously good for improving soil water retention (better I find than compost) and is also relatively low in nutrients. So you can use it in native plant beds for example.

So: shady in summer, allows sun through in winter, provides free mulch, soil conditioner, chicken litter and kicks the compost along.

Whats not to like about a deciduous tree? (Avoiding invasive roots is a matter of choosing the site and species carefully).

c_c™ said :

Source?

That’s a very big claim, which isn’t to say it wasn’t the genuine sentiment of some perhaps back then, but certainly there were laments early on that the hills (which as distinct from the base of the plains which were naturally lacking trees, were heavily wooded) were cleared by graziers for the most part, removing some useful natural resources from both a visual and practical stand point.

…

They also planted heaps of imported species in those early years two, and lost a lot. An early planting of cedars, about 10,000 were killed by draught and had to be replanted. 100,000 redwods were planted and a lot failed and had to be replaced.

I don’t have it on hand, but I do remember reading about it and I’m sure that they were talking about the number of trees on the plains. I’ll keep looking for the source. I also remember a photo posted on here that showed the difference in the inner north between 1920-ish and today. Chalk and cheese.

It’s a shame the redwoods didn’t take here, and it’s sad to see them struggling out in that patch near the airport. The redwoods are an enduring memory of California and the irony is that the 12 or so species of eucalypts that grow there, grow so well! Actually, in Wunderlich Park in San Mateo, there’s this weird junction between all redwoods and all eucalypts.

I used to lament my Gungahlin view of nothing but rooftops, but in the last few years, we are starting to see the street trees grow to the height where they start to take over the view.