SINCE the Post highlighted their plight, offers have been made to design new safe areas around trees in Petersfield Square threatened with the axe.

East Hampshire District Council wanted to fell the three mature and healthy Maples after their roots pushed up cobbles, causing a trip hazard, says Simon Jenkins of the council.

Now an award-winning landscape gardener from Stroud has offered her services for free, saying she is happy to provide designs for the area around the trees to make them safe.

Annie Chapman, of the Verde landscape design company, said: “I noticed the article in the Post looking for ideas to keep the trees in The Square. I am very happy to design something for free to suit the councils brief – it doesn’t seem a difficult problem.”

Robin Hart, a nationally accredited tree warden and joint author of the Petersfield area environmental plan, and Petersfield Society committee member Anna Hocking and her husband Drake, are also keen to help save the trees.

Robin, of The Spain in Petersfield, said: “A group to look at the problem and come up with a workable answer is being put together.”

When the felling proposal was made public, hundreds of Petersfield residents signed a petition calling for it to be stopped.

The district council took note, postponed the felling, and said it was happy to listen to alternative ideas.

But it insisted if none were suitable it was more than likely the Maples would come down in the New Year.

It also stressed that the original plan required the felled trees to be replaced by ones planted in ‘root pots’ to encourage the roots to grow down, rather than sideways.