Manchester city council is not alone in its apparently wanton destruction of green spaces.

In 2014, a now infamous deal to remove nearly half of Sheffield's 36,000 trees led to public outcry and a huge campaign to save them (they saved some, and their efforts led to the formation of a city-wide tree protection group that recently earned Sheffield Tree City of the World status).

In 2023, Plymouth council ordered 110 mature trees to be felled in the middle of the night.

The ill-fated HS2 project is still bulldozing through ancient woodland (again, in the name of progress).

Then there's the London Resort theme park that was nearly built on Swanscombe peninsula, an area of nationally important grasslands, coastal habitats, scrub and wetlands that not only buffers the coast from erosion but also stores carbon while providing homes for countless rare and threatened species.

Thanks to a massive campaign, London Resort withdrew its application, but the threat of losing the land still looms large.

There are many more micro-aggressions and micro-destructions that go under the radar, including those, of course, in our gardens.

There are around 30m gardens in the UK, but the trend to lock them beneath paving and plastic grass is growing.

Back in 2011, Greenspace Information for Greater London (GiGL) published a study of the changes it had observed in London's "garden vegetation structure" between 1998 and 2008.

It used drones to look at tree canopies and vegetation, and noted the colour of the ground – green for grass and grey for paving.