Few things inspire such a welling up of emotion in the passerby as the sight of a mature cherry tree being cut down or so I discovered a few weeks back when we took the chainsaw to an old Prunus that had been overpowering our front garden for years. I felt like a tree murderer as I witnessed a succession of raised brows and grave expressions passing the gate as the corpse lay on the ground.
And indeed, this silent censure was utterly understandable: the old cherry in springtime, laden with an abundance of double, pink blossom, was a sight to send the spirit soaring. The picture of it being reduced to a mass of severed, arboreal body-parts was a pitiful one.
Across the sea in Britain, flowering cherries were planted after the second World War to uplift the battle-weary population. Ireland followed suit, and hundreds were planted in cities here during the late 1940s. But cherries are short-lived trees with a lifespan of around 40 years. After that, a general decline in vitality and an increasing susceptibility to disease sets in.
My own cherry was well into its old age and although it produced a splendid crop of pink confetti each spring, it languished for the rest of the time. Sparsely covered in discoloured leaves, which fell to the ground a month before they should have, it sucked the moisture out of the soil, preventing any other vegetation from thriving. It was riddled with leaf miner, bacterial canker and goodness knows what else.
I'm not the only one chopping down cherry trees at the moment. All over Dublin, the corporation is engaged in a programme of removing street cherries which have reached the end of their useful lives and whose shallow roots have caused pavements to lift and buckle. Last year, 250 were taken out - but not until every resident on each street was notified (perhaps I should have followed a similar policy before expunging our own specimen). By March, the corporation will have planted suitable replacements along the verges, including hornbeam, whitebeam and the ornamental pear and crab apple: Pyrus `Chanticleer' and Malus tschonoskii.
And by March, I too will have planted my own replacement on the site of the old Prunus. But what to choose? Leafing through my tree bible, Hillier's Manual Of Trees And Shrubs, I find a few thousand different varieties leaping off the page. Most, unfortunately, are unsuitable for this parched town garden where, like much of Dublin, the soil is dry and slightly limey. And, as in many towns, especially near the sea, the rows of terraced houses act as a tunnel for the wind to blast up the street. Granite walls cast a "rain shadow" in the new tree's spot, making it even more arid. Then there is the question of what functions the tree is expected to perform. In this case, the requirements - typical for a town or suburban front garden - demand an absurdly multi-talented specimen. It has to be a hard-working, robust plant that will give pleasure in more than one season (with flowers, fruit and autumn colour), that will not become hideously huge and that will uncomplainingly accept a certain amount of buffeting, pollution and neglect. And of course, it must bring an extra liveliness to the garden by attracting all manner of birds and insects. Such a job description and such trying conditions rule out many of the more coveted, smaller trees. The very posh dogwood, Cornus controversa `Variegata' would die of thirst; the lovely golden acacia Robinia pseudoacacia `Frisia' is far too frail for this windy corner - likewise the Japanese maples whose leaves would singe in the wind; and by the time the Judas tree, Cercissi liquastrum, would have matured enough to produce its rosy-lilac pea blossom, I'll have retired to a quiet rural retreat.
Which brings me around to the old reliable candidates: members of the Sorbus, Crataegus and Malus genera. All are endowed with bee-luring spring blossom, bird-sustaining fruits and autumn colour that ranges from the pretty good to the spectacular. And all are hardy and well-suited to the rigours of this climate, as is proved by the native cousins - rowan and whitebeam, hawthorn and crab apple - of these fancy garden varieties.
For this particular patch, I have to reluctantly turn my back on trees from both the Sorbus and the Crataegus clans. The first are furnished with flowers that have a curious pong (as of something rotting overlaid with cheap scent), while the second are equipped with hard thorns that could make gardening in their vicinity a hazardous pastime. So it'll have to be a Malus, an ornamental crab. And with scores to select from, it won't be an easy choice. But for this week anyway, my money is on M. coronaria `Charlottae' with scented, shell-pink blossom and red fruits, or the early M. floribunda with white frothy flowers and yellow fruits, or maybe `Liset' with its purple young foliage, or perhaps . . .