Trees for avenues and wide streets

Avenues and wide streets look a lot better when they are flanked on both sides by trees. Traditionally is was also common practice to plant trees along prime avenues and streets. There are a number of benefits, but the main one was the shade they offered. A milky white skin used to be the classical ideal of beauty so a sun tan was deemed to be undesirable. Shade is still an important motive for placing trees along a street but these days it has more do with something else: climate change is causing the temperatures in the city to steadily increase and large trees have a cooling effect.

Avenue trees: what requirements do they need to meet?

Good avenue trees need to meet a number of criteria. They must have straight trunks with a vertical top and a free trunk height of at least two metres. During cultivation, quality trees are regularly pruned and the branching in the crown is balanced and dense. This makes it possible to remove the lower branches of the tree in the future without affecting the shape of the crown. Although this may not seem relevant in the first years, mature trees need a trunk height of at least four metres due to the traffic that has to pass beneath and hanging branches.

Which trees make suitable avenue trees?

Provided they don’t grow too irregularly, a lot of trees are suitable for planting in avenues and wide streets. As there is usually enough space above ground, few restrictions are placed on the crown, but avenue tree must have an upright growth habit. Below ground, space is often limited and because of the paving and traffic, the situation isn’t usually ideal for the trees to develop well. Therefore, choose species which are able to tolerate full or partial paving and pay particular attention to the preparation of a good planting site. You will also need to check whether any additional requirements apply to the trees. In streets and avenues, the preference is often for fruitless or thornfree cultivars. Use the tree filter to select the required features

Uniform trees

Good avenue trees come from a single, uniform batch of the same height and width. This will result in a beautiful straight line of green running through the neighbourhood after planting. Van den Berk specialises in large batches of avenue trees ranging in stem girth from 20-25 to 60-70. These trees are pruned annually and have a densely branched root system for optimum regrowth at new planting locations.

The advantages of large trees

Avenue trees give a huge boost to the quality of the outdoor space and they are vital in counterbalancing the increasingly tall buildings. For this reason it is preferable to plant slightly larger trees, selecting species from the first or second size categories. Large trees are less susceptible to vandalism, they have a substantially greater environmental rating and they have much more impact on the quality of life in the city. After all, a green living environment is demonstrably better for the health and also offers practical benefits: a reduction in crime, more social mixing and higher property prices.

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