Re: garden dispute

Sally,

My 2 cents worth...

Somewhere along the line, someone or some group decided that this tree was to be cut down. I'm in the process of having a fence installed for the city. I met with the fence company rep on Friday to show him the placement of the fence. He measured off the exact route with a wheeled type odometer tool and created a rough draft drawing on site which I approved. The purpose of this exercise is to make sure everyone is on board is in agreement of its path and the exact measurement in distance would be used to calculate the pricing.

In your case, hopefully the fencing company did something similar to this process. At that time, the tree should have been known as an obstacle in the proposed path of the fence. Did the CGer rep grant permission to the fencing company to have the tree cut down? If so, then it seems to me that the CG is liable for this action. If the fencing company deviated from the agreed upon route of the fence and cut the tree down, then it is their responsibility to compensate the gardener or CG. Of course, I'm not sure if the gardener has any legal rights to a tree planted in the CG. The CG property is probably not owned by this individual. On a another not, has any CGers ever been compensated for someone stealing the harvest from their plots? Does your CG carry any type of insurance that would cover such a loss?

I'm not sure how this unfortunate action could have occurred without all parties aware of the exact route of the fence. If this was not known when the actual installation begin and the fencing company took it down without permission, then this was truly a lack of communications between all involved.

If you go forth to compensate the gardener, I would advise you to contact the city arborist to come out and give you a good estimation of the worth of the tree. Its overall health and maturity are the main factors when determining its value. If it was diseased or showing any signs of decline, this will lower its value.

Hope this helps (I'm not a lawyer),
Jim Call, City of Huntsville Tree Commission Board Member, Mayor's Representative

Sally McCabe wrote:

I'm in need of some advice.

One of our gardens recently installed a new fence after housing construction
next door did in the old one.  During the installment of the fence, one of a
gardener's fruit trees trees got cut down.  Apparently this was a rare
French pear tree - Passe Corassane.  It was 10 years old, and he is requesting
to be compensated $500.  The garden has no money in their kitty because of the
new fence.

Is the garden responsible for replacing the tree, or for making compensation
for something planted in an individual plot?

How should we handle this situation? In 25 years of community garden, it's
always been somebody ELSE who was the bad guy!

Sally McCabe, Philadelphia

[demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/ms-tnef which had a name of winmail.dat]


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The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org


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