08/05/2026
We lost the big trees and replaced them with smaller ones
Some streets still feel green, while others barely have any tree cover at all, but either way something has shifted over time.
If you stop and look up, not across the street but above it, you start to notice the difference.
Many areas around Ipswich were once shaped by tall species like eucalypts, native pines, and large figs that did not just sit in the landscape, they defined it.
In older suburbs, parts of that canopy still remain, but it is thinner, more broken, and often much lower than it used to be. In newer areas, it is mostly absent from the beginning.
What has replaced it is familiar and understandable. Smaller street trees are easier to manage, safer around infrastructure, and more compatible with powerlines, driveways, and solar access. Not everyone has the space or ability to grow and maintain a large tree.
But there is a real ecological shift in that change.
A suburb made up mostly of smaller trees does not function the same way as one shaped by tall ones.
When that height disappears, so do many of the things that came with it. Shade becomes patchy instead of continuous, cooling is reduced across entire streets, habitat layers shrink, and the connections between trees overhead start to disappear. The whole system becomes flatter and simpler.
There is also a practical side to this that people feel every summer.
Large trees do not just provide shade, they actively cool the air through evapotranspiration, lowering temperatures across streets and homes. That can mean less reliance on air conditioning and more comfortable living spaces.
This idea is not new. People have been using trees to cool homes for thousands of years, designing around shade and airflow long before modern air conditioning existed.
So it is worth asking a simple question.
In your street, what is the tallest living thing?
Is there a mix of heights, with the occasional large tree rising above everything else, or are most trees sitting at a similar level, with power poles and rooftops now sitting higher than the canopy?
This is not about blame. It is about noticing a change that has happened gradually over time.
Because once you see it, it becomes clear that we did not just remove trees, we changed the shape of the ecosystem.
And where there is space to consider it, there may be value in thinking vertically again over time.
