By Mal Butler
The IW Council has placed a Tree Preservation Order on an apple orchard at The Mount in Yarmouth, after the IW Observer highlighted the ‘pruning’ damage which has stopped them from growing.
As we reported on March 13, the trees were all planted at the same time 12 years ago and are dedicated to local organisations and people who have contributed to the town over the course of more than a century. Twelve of the 27 trees have been damaged, all in one section of the orchard.
In October the town council appointed a volunteer tree warden, Thomas Cowley, who had stepped down from the council in May 2024. Mr Cowley is a trustee of environment and conservation charity, Wight Nature Fund. In February 2025, he contacted the IW Council, asking for a TPO to be put on the trees and was told that this could be done, but heard nothing further.
Mr Cowley said: “As a volunteer unpaid tree warden, I’m not there with a mission to stop the damage; I’m there to champion trees. The Isle of Wight Council’s tree officers and police are there to deal with criminal damage, which is what I believe the cutting is.”
We enquired about the current situation on the TPO request on Monday, and an IW Council spokesman confirmed: “The council’s planning department receives a high volume of requests for Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) from across the Island each year, in addition to processing more than 600 individual tree works applications and providing arboricultural advice on a significant number of planning applications. We manage this workload as efficiently as available resources allow.
“Following a review of the request submitted in 2025, the authority has now made an area TPO that covers all of the trees identified in the enquiry, as well as others located on the same piece of land.”
Mr Cowley welcomed the TPO and thanked IW Observer for their assistance in getting it in place.
Isle of Wight Observer