It was a sad moment this week and I felt terribly guilty: we cut down a tree. Passers-by walking up the steps to the bridge at London Rd Station noticed: ‘Something’s changed … where’s that plum tree?’.

The plum – a ‘dwarf’ Marjorie’s Seedling’ – was planted back in 2012, originally in a dustbin! It’s grown and grown but never really given us a good crop of plums. It outgrew its dustbin some years back and we built it a new enclosure. Despite regular pruning by our friends at Brighton Permaculture Trust, it just got bigger and bigger but no more fruit.

For the last few years, it’s suffered bad attacks of rosy aphids which cause the leaves to curl and drop. This year, this has been compounded by very hot and dry weather and the poor plum tree ended up with frazzled brown leaves and looking very unhappy.

It also had signs of possible canker: scarring on the branches, and it had managed to impale itself on the fence. We noticed too how it was starting to overshadow the whole garden, cutting out light from almost everything else.

So, though hard pruning might have been an option, the best thing seemed to be to cut it down. It had proven to be the wrong plant in the wrong place.

This will benefit the rest of the garden and in particular the cordoned apple trees and pear trees. We had to remove a pear some years back but five out of the seven original fruit trees are still going strong.

We’ve planted more sweet peas and trailing lobelia around the tree stump. There is a lot more light in the garden and passers-by have started noticing again our cordoned fruit trees which were hidden by the plum. The omens are good for our apples and pear this year. We’ll miss you, old plum.