Our favourite tree turned out to be my ‘worst garden nightmare’. We had to get rid of it

The last person onto the flight from Brisbane last month slid into the seat next to mine. We exchanged that quick plane-buddy smile. “Hi,” she said. She was pretty recognisable. “It’s Deborah, yeah?” Singer Deborah Conway, whose 1991 String of Pearls album was the soundtrack to my early motherhood.

There were so many memories wrapped up in her songs – instant love, sodden disappointments, betrayal – that I was thrilled to have a chat. We talked mostly about the weather. Brisbane had been so warm we’d been in shorts. Deborah, not so much.

I discovered the 20-metre tree in our yard is a Paulownia, which is described as “your worst garden nightmare”.Credit: Wikimedia Commons

She peeled up her pant leg to show me what lay underneath. Thermal long johns. Stop. You’ve driven from your hotel and queued in security and wandered around the terminal in ski-gear-adjacent?

Conway laughed. “I’m hot now but I knew it would be really cold when we landed. Planning ahead.”

That sacrificing of current comfort for potential future happiness resonated because a couple of weeks earlier my husband and I had chopped down a healthy, thriving showstopper of a tree in our backyard.

Planted by our home’s former owners about five years ago, the paulownia tree was already maybe 20 metres high. In summer, it exploded with parrots and produced spikes of lilac flowers. Provided a dappled haven. Was great to climb.

But. The branches dropped leaves into the gardens of five neighbours. The distance between the limbs and the back of the house seemed to shrink every week. And our lawn was increasingly riddled with dozens of mini sinkholes we worried were root-related.

A friend who knows trees came over. “Gawd, a Paulownia. Get rid of it. It’s a pest – banned in some places.” Was she right? Google said so: “One of the fastest growing trees in the world, this pretty but extremely invasive species is … your worst garden nightmare.”

Two arborists reluctantly agreed. The tree would keep growing like nobody’s business. Metres a year, sucking up other plants’ sunlight, water and nutrients. The massive roots could stuff up foundations. Pruning wouldn’t control the 20 million seeds produced and dropped annually.

So one terrible day a tree lopper came with terrible chainsaws and soon the tree was just a whirling buzz of woodchips. The hole in our garden was like a brutalised mouth. Neighbours’ windows looked into our bathroom. The light was wrong.

We were literally staggered by the reality of choosing something that might or might not happen one day over embracing what’s happening right now. Of being afraid enough of the unknown to literally cut it off at the knees.

Practically, I’m still confident our brutal choice was right. But it’s made me think about living in the present versus future-based decisions. How we all dedicate ourselves to squirrelling away our super for the next age and don’t paint our walls with colour in case it affects resale value.

These days living in the moment – mindfulness – is a full-blown industry. While there’s still not tons of scientific evidence to support the practice, a 2010 study into mental wellbeing by Harvard University psychologists found, yes, happiness is created by being present and that thinking ahead, even about pleasant things, makes people more miserable.

The trick for me would be a hybrid model. Big picture planning – career, health, finances – while leaving room for day-to-day spontaneity. Recognising that everything, good and bad, is temporary so I can stop clinging to it or fearing the future.

I’ve always been a planner. Looked forward to holidays as if life is what happens between airports. Looked forward to a bad fringe growing out, to the last months of pregnancy, to weddings. I’m now obsessed with looking forward to retirement.

But the lost tree has flicked a switch. What I really want is to not see the present as busy and boring and expensive, something to tick off or sleep off, but to understand this actual moment is all I have that’s guaranteed.

My own thermal long johns are being stowed with spring upon us, but another tree is being planned for the empty space. I don’t even need fast-growing, just something else that gives the best free things – a mix of sun and shade, new beginnings.

Kate Halfpenny is the founder of Bad Mother Media.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.