Its Christmas tree Philipp Good, 57, has been worried. A Colorado-fir, two and a half meters high. Bought on a plantation in the Region. Thus, the landscape gardener takes his working object home: Well the CEO of IG Suisse Christmas tree. Lately, he receives messages from the Christmas tree industry, that the trees may result, in many regions sprout only with a building permit from the soil.

“It is a practice, there is a change that we note in the last time,” says Good. “We know from cantons like Solothurn and Zürich, where you need today for the planting of Christmas trees for a building permit.” Not because of new laws, but because the current law is more rigorously designed. Good farms, the management already ban a Christmas Tree knows. For example, in the Canton of Solothurn.

A derivation from the rauplanung law

There, the owner of a horticulture and forestry operation in Hofstetten-Flüh planted on its soil in the agriculture zone, 300 young red Spruce. The cantonal construction and Department of justice whistle him back. The Christmas trees are “non-zone compliant”, a building permit could not be granted. The Christmas trees are “completely remove”.

The man moved in front of the administrative court. This the lower court relied in its judgment: In Christmas tree culture, it was a “licence system” within the meaning of the spatial planning act. You’ll operate as a hobby, to a “zone illegal recreational agriculture”. The trees were also in the Jura conservation zone. The judge ordered the “Dismantling” – of the owners had to cut down his 300 red Spruce.

“All establishments”, the planting of Christmas trees, you need a building permit, it is called Solothurn, the office for spatial planning of the Canton. The “building Permit requirement for tree crops” leave from the Swiss Federal spatial planning act can be derived. The permit had previously been “two to three Times” refused, estimates of the authority. Exact Figures are not available.

Around 1.2 to 1.5 million fir trees are also available this year in the Swiss offices. Because of the need for regional ceilings, imported 65 percent, especially from Denmark. “You have to ask yourself, how useful it is, when you put domestic producers, with sometimes absurd Paragrafenhuberei obstacles in the way.”

Canton of Thurgau and Aargau prove that It is also different

But also the Canton of Zurich is ruthless. “In the case of Christmas tree crops with fencing, it is always a building permit required to plant,” says Markus Pfanner of the building Department. Not require a permit to be trees, the plants of the “individual tree”. What is to be understood, is at the discretion of the local building authorities. In some cases, the official blessing was denied already, says Pfanner: “Isolated, fenced-in Christmas tree plantations by non-farmers has not been approved in the past.”

That there is another way, shows the Canton of Thurgau. “The planting of tree crops, respectively, fir-trees is not subject to the building Permit requirement,” says Matthias Gredig from the cantonal office for spatial development. “It makes no difference whether it is a farm or a private person.” Accommodating the Canton of Aargau. The planting of Christmas trees, according to the construction Department “in the normal farming zone without a permit”.

“It grew to a legal wild,” said Philipp Good of the IG Christmas tree. Now he wants a law, the legislative counsel to clarify the situation. “We need legal security for our 230 members,” says Good. “It can’t be that each Canton establishes other rules for Christmas trees.”

(Sunday newspaper)

Created: 15.12.2018, 20:14 PM