An overview on Swedish avenues or an average number of those unfortunately does not exist. But in the near future such a report will presumably be done.
Birch-avenue | photo: Jan Töve
The kind of avenues you find in Sweden differs very much depending where in Sweden you are. In the north, birch is the most common tree. You can find birch-avenues in the whole of Sweden. Other common trees that have not been affected by any disease are lime and maple. Common trees in the south is horse-chestnut (affected by disease in some parts, new planting is not done). Ash tree is common in the whole of Sweden (except of the northern part). It has also been affected and is not planted any longer. Sorbus intermedia is also common as well as oak and avenues of willow in some parts. Elm is today rare, it is only common on the island of Gotland. Fruit-tree-avenues exist in some parts but are rare.
In Sweden there are no exact statistics for where avenues are located, but let us say that you divide the roads into three different categories. Each category have roughly one third. The categories are national state owned roads, roads in towns or close to towns, owned and managed by the town (the local county office) and private roads (leading to farms).
All avenues are protected by the environmental code. If you want to cut down a tree for example security-reasons, you must apply to the regional county office. If the tree is not a dangerous tree (often decided by an arborist) you are not allowed to cut it down.
New plantings differ depending on the region but overall, new plantings have been done the last 20 years on all three different categories of roads.
Contact:
Patrik Olsson, PhD. Human geographer
Telephone: +46 44 13 58 43
Mobile: +46 733 13 58 43
Mail: patrik.olsson@regionmuseet.se