A company commissioned by the city felled more than 1,000 donated trees in Meckenheim near Bonn. The specialist company was supposed to mulch an adjacent area - and in the process also razed the small forest planted by a foundation to the ground.
"We were completely horrified, tears were shed," said Norbert Schaffrath, chairman of the board of trustees of the German Children's Direct Aid Foundation. The trees were “thriving magnificently” and some were five meters tall.