TREES matter to people, as the Royal Jersey Golf Club discovered last week when the felling of invasive species caused a furore in Grouville.

The controversies surrounding the pollarding of poplars in Gorey Village, and the wielding of the axe against an old yew in the cemetery opposite the parish church, are a warning of Grouville’s passion for its trees. It was the felling of the graveyard yew that gained Grouville the distinction of being the first parish to receive a preservation order for a stump.

When a mature tree is felled, for whatever reason, the landscape is changed forever. Even if a replacement is planted, it can take a lifetime or two to reach maturity. Therein lies our affection for trees as they grow with us. Trees that I planted with my father as tiny whips 20 years ago now form a delightful copse, providing welcome shade in the summer and shielding the garden from the prevailing south-westerly wind.

Like many residents of Grouville who do not play golf, I exercise the right of the people to enjoy common land. Common land is a piece of land owned by one person — in this case the Crown — and over which other people can exercise certain traditional rights, such as allowing their livestock to graze upon it.

Grouville Links, it should be remembered, are common land for which the golf club pays rent, and it is only good and proper that the public exercise the right of commons. It is a happy mutual relationship that has worked well for more than a century.

Having to share this stretch of common land with golfers can be a pain, especially when walking in the company of a ball-mad Jack Russell. But the best thing about the Grouville links is that it has preserved this delightful stretch of our coastline as an open space, albeit in the over-manicured and man-made style of all golf courses.

I had to laugh on reading in the JEP the comment attributed to the head greenkeeper, David Crawford, who said that the reason why the trees were felled was to maintain the site as nature intended it to be. As pleasant as the course is, it has long been removed from its natural state and original character.

Nonetheless, the links are far preferable to a collection of houses packed on the duneland that once made the east coast not totally dissimilar to St Ouen’s Bay.

The dunes at Les Mielles have quite rightly been preserved and protected, yet no one thought to do the same for similar environs at La Mare, at Green Island, from Le Hocq to La Rocque and from Fauvic to the Royal Jersey.

The sand dunes that once acted as a natural defence against the sea have long disappeared under a hotchpotch of unco-ordinated ribbon development which separates the people from the foreshore and prevents public access to the beach.

There is, however, one last strip of original duneland in Grouville that stretches from Grande Route des Sablons to the beach at Fauvic.

Consideration should be given to preserving this precious piece of land before a greedy developer earmarks it for yet another of the trendy and iconic developments from the coterie of award-winning architects so favoured by the Environment Minister.

.Trees were on my mind at the weekend for another reason. A 120-year-old tree was chopped down in Prague. Hardly headline-grabbing news worthy of a worldwide audience . . . after all, it was just a tree in a sleepy backwater of the Czech Republic’s capital.

The story was played out on Rad-io 4’s superb ‘From Our Own Correspondent’, presented by Kate Adie, around the time that Islanders were learning about the fate of the links trees. Along with many features in this beautiful central European city that survived revolutions, world wars and Communist domination, the tree finally met its match in the developers who care more for profit per square metre than open green spaces and a sense of community.

The correspondent reported the sorrow of one Prague resident who rescued a section of trunk as a souvenir of what she regarded as an old friend. As it lay on her kitchen table, she tracked the rings that had witnessed the turmoil of the early 20th century and survived the Nazi occupation, Communist domination and the pollution that resulted from the rapid Soviet-led industrialisation of the Warsaw Pact states.

In a city that has changed for the worse over the past 20 years, and where modern development is threatening Prague’s distinctive architectural character, that tree had come to symbolise the Czech people’s ability to survive the worst of times and eventually to find freedom and independence.

If you don’t ‘get’ what trees are about, and how important they are to our everyday lives, you probably think I’m a tree-hugging oddball. William Blake summed up divided opinion on trees: ‘The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in their way.’ Or, in the case of the links, a tree that stands in the way of a green.

When a tree reaches the end of its life, and becomes a danger to the public or a threat to property and the indigenous biodiversity of the environment, it must go. But shading golf greens and failing to tick enough environmental boxes are pretty lame reasons for wholesale felling in an area which is not private land, but open to be enjoyed by the public.

Invasive species can be managed as is happening at Portelet, Noirmont and Victoria Tower, where it is acknowledged that they form an important part of the landscape and add to the pleasure of those who enjoy roaming such wonderful expanses of our varied countryside. Rather than being chopped down all at once, trees such as sycamore and holm oaks can be thinned out gradually, allowing the public to get used to the idea, and to allow new trees to become established.

If the trees on the golf course had to go, would it not have been better, or a bitter pill made easier to swallow, if they had been felled gradually with notices posted to inform the public of the plans?