Helping the tree population recover from storm Ophelia

Peter Dowdall on the devastating aftermath of Ophelia on our tree population.

I’m a bit nervous to even say the word after what has happened recently but trees are something that have made the news for all the wrong reasons over the last few weeks.

I don’t know how many trees came down when Ophelia came to visit and there will probably never be an accurate count but it’s certainly many hundreds in Cork alone and probably thousands nationally. For me, the most heartbreaking sight over the last few weeks was that of the Centre Park Rd in Cork City with over 20 mature Lime Trees lying on their sides, savagely ripped up out of the ground. Planted about 100 years ago to mark the opening of the Ford plant in Cork, they had become part of the fabric of that part of the city and the road feels naked already without them.