Residents angry at the community: Old spruce hedge should give way to the sidewalk

Created: 08/17/2022, 08:15

By: Andreas Höger

After 75 years, the end is imminent: Monika Weber and her son Vincent fear for the high spruce hedge of their property, which would not survive the seven meter wide expansion of Spitzwegstrasse (two meters of which is a sidewalk).

The municipality does not agree to their suggestion to designate a less wide play street.

© Thomas Plettenberg

A spruce hedge has been growing on the outskirts of Holzkirchner for 75 years.

It has shot up several meters high and has overgrown public ground.

That was never a problem, but it is now one: the municipality is planning a service road with a sidewalk for a new building line.

The hedge would hardly survive that.

The owner family is outraged and doesn't understand why there has to be an extra sidewalk.

Holzkirchen

– Vincent Weber has a famous great-grandfather: Andreas Mitterfellner (1912-1972) was a landscape painter. After the war he built a house with a studio on Roggersdorfer Straße.

In 1947 the artist had a 100 meter long spruce hedge planted on the southern edge, which now shields the property impenetrably.

But probably not for much longer: Vincent and his mother Monika Weber fear that a road construction project planned by the municipality will put an end to the hedge.

It is about the extension (250 meters) and the development of Spitzwegstrasse - a service road that branches off from Andreas-Mitterfellner-Strasse - the community honored his memory years ago - and runs down to Flinspachstrasse.

The gap closure serves as access for three building sites.

Because the municipality not only insists on a five-meter-wide street, but also on a two-meter sidewalk, it becomes tight for the neighboring hedge.

"The hedge was cut regularly," says Vincent Weber, "but over the years it has grown 80 centimeters beyond the property line on public land."

The trunks themselves, as Holzkirchner emphasizes, are on private property.

But if the town hall insisted on the sidewalk, the spruce trees and their roots would have to be taken back on the street side.

"The site would have died," believes Weber.

Experts would assume that the shallow-rooted spruces would not survive the intervention.

Such a magnificent, old hedge with a length of over 100 and a height of four to seven meters is unique in the region, believes Weber.

Their excess has not been objected to for generations.

Weber is certain that the row of spruces could be preserved if the municipality dispensed with the sidewalk and instead designated a less wide play street.

"That would also be quieter." Unfortunately, however, the town hall does not address these concerns and would rather risk the loss of "completely intact nature".

The community is very willing to talk, says Mayor Christoph Schmid.

After consultation with the lower nature conservation authority at the district office, the family was offered to co-finance the replanting of a "species-rich beech hedge".

But the Webers don't agree to that.

"It would take many years for it to be as high as our spruce hedge," says Vincent Weber, "and it's not opaque in winter."

The municipality, for its part, does not move away from the pavement.

"This is public ground and there is a unanimous decision by the municipal council," Schmid clarifies, who concedes "that the hedge will probably not survive the road construction".

Work is scheduled to begin in the fall.

The Webers hope that the community will switch to Spielstrasse by then.

"We know that the proposal was up for debate," says Vincent Weber.

He collected signatures to support his cause.

"140 Holzkirchner have already registered."

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