Trees Please, We're British

A Memory of Rockfield Park.

The current fad for destruction of our lovely landscape and English and Welsh countryside has to stop! When I first came to Rockfield many years ago (from the Forest) it was a long way from Monmouth, now the suburbs encroach as mad cap planning policies seek to further add insanity to their list of justifications for murdering wildlife and killing the countryside. The recent proposal to get rid of a perfectly healthy beech hedge to better "see the view" is yet another misplaced euphemism for terminating our green and pleasant land. One politician even had the gall to announce that it was in the interests of English law to get rid of parliament; imagine that! The organo-phosphates pouring into our rivers and the Monnow threaten to totally commit suicide on what once was a magnificent garden! The poison turns to weed the beautiful flowers, trees and poisons every living creature in the river to death. I remember only in 2010 that the clean stream where we lived (Leadon) was so healthy there could be seen fish swimming downstream. It goes without saying that the current Brexit debate tempts all to declare "I told you so!" but the reality of mass immigration, is that every excuse for development can be seen here by the overcrowding of our towns and villages. The aim to create a flower meadow to encourage bees and butterflies would not be better served by the cutting down of deceduous trees. In fact the leaf-shedding varieties promote insect life far better. MPs already know my feelings on the matter of flooding and inundation - which at Rockfield can be seen to be believed; the roots of the trees exposed by chemicals that erode the very river banks; the weeds choke with lushness. We protest against any further yielding to governmental pressure to destroy flowering gardens, vegetable and fruits patches. We encourage all householders to be self-sufficient, but moreover to use their own canopy to fight global-warming. The need to plant and plant more trees is to defend the countryside by cooling the shade bringing down the carbon emissions and cleaning the landscape from pollution. Furthermore the truncating of noise is witness to the tractors in near-distance sounding as so close; this effect is the result of fore-shortening distances. This phenomenon is a consequence of global-warming and the mindless vandalism of those who fell, block and leave rubbish, without thinking about the damage to wildlife. More people should tell the Government how irritated we are by the current-anti-British thinking that is killing our landscapes. When we see properties like Rockfield Park our response should be that only by cherishing the traditions of the British countryside can a profound sense of the injustice of gross development be fought back. Ending this anomaly is very hard, but there is still time to save such properties from ill-thought out planning to change for change sakes. Often the wild and traditional are the best way to fight back the stupidity and blindness of Government. As a life member of the CPRE I see this damage every single day. I would plead with you not to try to modernise the gardens for the sake of a pathway to modernism; thus a collective error. I have rowed in regatta in the Monnow, Wye, Severn and Thames competitively, but now the rivers are poisoned to hell! Thereby lies the road to ruin for all our gardens.

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