Article: Perspective: Branching out to help; Twenty years ago, the only things flourishing in inner city Balsall Heath were drugs and prostitution. In the second of our three-part series on neighbourhoods, Jo Ind discovers the suburb is now a thriving community.

Byline: Jo Ind

In a wooden building next to the balti-lined Ladypool Road in Birmingham's Balsall Heath, an Afro-Caribbean woman, two white men and three south Asian women are talking excitedly about a tree.

At eight feet in diameter and 110 feet long, it is a tree that has taken on allegorical proportions.

'It was in Cannon Hill Road that this giant sycamore tree fell down in a lady's garden.'

'It was just massive. It split in half covering two gardens.'

'It wasn't just two gardens. It fell across about 14 of them.'

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