EVERYBODY today is being encouraged to plant a tree. An excellent idea.

Our local council, BCP, encompasses a wide area with many of its properties affording open, green spaces to its tenants. A small forest probably, if you totalled it all up. Some properties have front and back gardens which in many cases have become homes to redundant vehicles or brick rubble.

Why do the council offer properties which afford gardens to new tenants who have zero interest in using or maintaining them? Surely anyone within this remit would be better off living in a flat, where the question of upkeep would not be a problem.

If current environmental problems are to be taken seriously then all available space should be utilised to its full potential. Ask prospective tenants if they would be prepared to plant a tree or use the plot as nature intended. And employ staff to periodically check and oversee that they are keeping to their side of the bargain. These jobs could be funded by the revenue that is being raised by the vast building projects being witnessed right across the conurbation (plenty of flats to fill).

I think that the time has arrived where you can’t pick and choose where you live, and if the council are serious about the changing world in which we live, then any opportunity to support wildlife, and plant and tree growth, on our diminishing landscape must be grasped at every opportunity.

BOB WOODLAND Cavan Crescent, Poole