The Dilemma of the Eucalyptus Tree
photo by S Glarum
It came with the house. It did not ask to be here. Someone planted it many years ago, then moved away. This large eucalyptus tree, that for many reasons should be cut down, only asks to live out its life without the roar of a chainsaw at its limbs and roots.
We moved into our coastal cottage on Oregon’s upper left edge in 2017. The house sits on small lot behind a dune within a block of the ocean. A cozy garden area is nestled in back. Smack in the middle of this cute little yard is a eucalyptus tree that is far too large for the space.
Our predicament: The tree gives too much shade for a garden. It constantly drops long, aggravating strips of bark on the ground, and it scatters leaves everywhere. Plus, it is not well. It needs a tether to hold its canopy together, and disease is starting to rot the crook of the tree. It all comes down to the tree being a nuisance—and, besides, it drinks too much. The ground around it is sucked dry. Let’s rip off its limbs, saw it down, haul it off, and be done with it.
The tree’s predicament: If I could leave and give you peace, I would. This is not my land. This is not the air I choose to breathe. I am a foreigner wishing, like you, that I were elsewhere. Please forgive me for the trouble I cause. We are bound together in distaste of the situation. My being here is not of my own choosing, but of what others decided for me. Destroy me if you wish. I would rather die than grow old where I am not wanted.
In 2020, we had the tree removed, but not without heartache. The tree suffered a fate that was not of its own making. It was the last of a small grove of eucalyptus trees that had been planted in the area decades earlier. But like much in nature, the grove became overrun by folks like us who wanted the space for other uses. One by one the trees were lost to storms and progress.
We rationalize the tree’s removal by saying that it was not native to the area. In fact, eucalyptus trees do better in warmer, drier climates than that of Oregon’s upper coast. Because of its non-native location, the tree had structural issues. Its upper limbs had been banded by the previous owner to keep the tree from splitting. The tree had grown larger, and the bands were near their breaking point. This gave more reason to have the tree removed.
It is now 2024. We have a beautiful flowering garden with raised beds for vegetables instead of the overwhelming tree. In the end, our predicament with the tree outweighed the tree’s predicament with us. That is the story of nature versus our industrial world. As John Prine laments in his song about coal mining’s destruction of Paradise, Kentucky: They dug for their coal till the land was forsaken/Then they wrote it all down as the progress of man. Our episode with the eucalyptus tree is not as dramatic as destroying nature for the sake of coal, but we did destroy a tree for the sake of a garden. In the end, the tree was not allowed to grow old, but was gotten rid of as it wished to be if not wanted, and we did not want it.
There is an afterword. As the tree came down, our neighbor collected the wood for his fireplace. The tree, in a way, found a new, more valuable purpose for someone else. We were happy about that.
