ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns three forms of meaning that emerged in the campaign against Sheffield City Council’s felling of many thousands of healthy street trees as part of the Streets Ahead Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract. In examining conceptions of memory, beauty and hospitality, I have two central aims: to emphasise the crucial significance of the intangible, cultural forms of meaning that street trees evoke; and to critique the way in which such forms of meaning are being conscripted into neoliberal rhetoric as ‘cultural services’ or ‘cultural value.’ Ultimately, this chapter uses its primary focus on memory, beauty and hospitality to move beyond restrictedly human interests and to posit multispecies ethics as a way of conceiving of the significance of street trees that carries more radial ecological potential.
