After reading Trevor Pateman's comments about the planters full of dead trees in Church Road and Western Road, Brighton and Hove (Letters, March 28), I would like to know the cost of this project.

The trees, imported from Italy, allegedly cost £1,000 each. The tubs are tailormade by a firm in Scotland.

There are 60 of them so, with transport not an inexpensive option, add the earth and the recently added slate chippings and you have the most expensive dustbins in Britain.

Why spend hundreds of thousands when a couple of paving stones could have been removed for the plants?

Oh, yes - silly me. When paving stones are removed they are replaced by asphalt, which after various utilities have dug and redug looks like a patchwork.

What do we call a pavement with no paving?

Any ideas?

-Patsy Perrousset, Portland Road, Hove