An open letter to the people of Adelaide

North Terrace is our city’s intellectual and cultural heart – home to our parliament, two universities, a museum, art gallery and state library. It defines us to ourselves and to the many people who visit our grand city. That’s why the North Terrace redevelopment is so important.

The original vision of the architects was a splendid one. It included removing the clutter of vegetation that currently obscures the precinct’s historic buildings, and replacing it with a double row of elegant, white-barked gums whose high, broken canopy would provide shade without shutting out views of the architecture. The removal of much of the vegetation outside the State Library reveals just how appropriate that vision was. Now, however, we face the decision as to what trees to plant along our terrace.

Last year it was decided to replace the gums with elms, whose dark bark and dense canopies would foil the architect’s vision. Now it seems, plane trees may replace the elms, providing an even denser screen of leaves to obscure the brilliant buildings of our terrace. Being non-native they will, of course feed no parrots, honeyeaters or jewel beetles, but will instead clog our drains with their leaves, induce hay-fever and attract pest species like starlings. Such trees are about as much use to our wildlife as concrete posts.

I fear that the gums – the logical choice - were rejected because some South Australians have no pride in our national biodiversity, but instead yearn for the mal-adapted vegetation of Europe. This is an appalling situation, for Australia is home to some of the world’s most wondrous plants and animals, and we are all guardians of that precious heritage. We seem happy to have splendid native plantings at Bolivar Sewerage treatment plant, but to vegetate the heart of our city with foreign weeds!

The Murray River is in such a state that the people of Adelaide will soon be engaged in a struggle to find sufficient clean water. We are already fighting to preserve our native fauna. Will our children really thank us for planting the heart of our city with thirsty foreign trees? Will visitors congratulate us on skies devoid of parrots and other native birds? Will they really be impressed with a boulevard that is a pale imitation of Europe, at a cost which sucks the life and precious water from Adelaide?

Planting Australian native trees on North Terrace is a matter of patriotism as well as common sense. Myself and many others would lose all faith in this place if our finest boulevard were to be disfigured by trees from Europe.

Tim Flannery