AUCKLAND TREE PLANTING.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 26 October 1916, Page 2

AUCKLAND TREE PLANTING.

A branch of the Women's Civic League is doing a great and too little known work for Auckland city. It is the scenery conservation branch. The committee are working hard in a quiet way. Several members have personally canvassed the residents of certain streets, and have collected or been promised money to .help to beautify these streets. Several streets in Remuera, one in Mt. Albert, and one in Epsom are under consideration. •' The residents on the Point Chevalier Road have been organised by one energetic lady into a working bee that shows the latent patriotism of the citizens if only they are organised. The residents of the street are both doing the work and sharing the cost. This is a fine example ef how things can be done. Each of these trees will be of personal iterest to everyone residing in the. street, and will therefore be protected. This form of civic activity is generally successful. Some years ago a, certain street in a gocd residential portion of Christchurch was taken in hand by its residents, Trees were planted, and the grass before each house mown at the same time as the lawn. The street became a garden, protected by its inhabitants, and kept up at no cost to the rates. .It took only a little labour on the part of each householder, Examples of this can be seen on Calliope Road, Devonport, but it is done only in a haphazard manner. Public opinion should be so strong as to make such work universal and regular. The great need of Auckland is a really live sentiment for beauty in the city. At present Auckland is beautiful in spots — and hideously .ugly in larger spaces. There are places in Auckland, rubbish tips and so forth, which would not be tolerated a moment in any other city in New Zealand. Even congested Wellington possesses nothing of the sort, The real need of Auckland is ail energetic Beautifying Society ; not an association with a few mouldy ideas diawn from old-time sources, but a society

that will appreciate the wondrous j beauty of Auckland's situation and of our native flora, and try to inculcate a national feeling about our own plants. We hope to be a nation some day. Let us see to it that as a nation we are national, and love beauty. The Civic League is striving in one of its branches to wake up public opinion on this subject of our native flora, and the bideousness' of the waste places in Auckland, and they have received sympathy from the City Council; but it is the woman citizen who can, and should, put her shoulder to the wheel in this matter and help to make her larger home beautiful That is a women's privilege, and' Helensville women must come in and aid in beautifying our town.