When you've parted with millions for a home with sea views to die for you will stop at nothing to protect your investment. This appears to be the state of mind among some residents of Sandbanks, the exclusive peninsula of luxury homes overlooking Poole harbour in Dorset – where there has been a rash of cases of "tree mugging".
Poole Council says it has recorded at least eight attacks, or "muggings", on mature trees protected by preservation orders over the last six months. Preferred methods of attack seem to include pouring Jeyes cleaning fluid into the soil around the base of the tree, or burying rock salt adjacent to the largest roots. The time-honoured classic (popular since the days of the Leylandii Wars) of hammering copper nails into the trunk is still in vogue, too.
"The methods are getting more underhand," says Andy Dearing, the council's planning enforcement officer. "They come at night, cut through the roots and then put the soil back. It can be months before anyone realises what has happened."
It doesn't take too long to find criminal advice online. Google Answers has a popular discussion thread entitled, "How to kill a large tree, preferably undetected?". But the question remains: why? Who in their right mind would want to wilfully kill a tree?
Dearing thinks even fines of £20,000 might not prevent tree muggings. "It's not kids doing it, it's quite simply people who have control of their own land and are seeking to maximise the development or view potential. We are talking about Sandbanks where per square foot it is one of the most expensive places to live and develop in the UK.
"The majority of people are law-abiding, but a hard core believe they can ride roughshod over the council. Some of the trees are hundreds and hundreds of years old. We won't get them back."
