It’s all got greener around Euston [All photos Simon Lamrock]

TREES axed to make way HS2 Euston are fighting back this summer.

Mature trees were cut to stumps just days before the government called a two-year pause on the government’s multi-billion-pound railway project.

Environmentalists were furious that the 11 trees in and around Euston Square Gardens had been cut down out of “spite”.

Climate campaigner Dorothea Hackman said the stumps had sprouted unusually late this year and there had been concerns from residents they had been poisoned.

“Nothing like the exuberant growth last year, but a comfort to see the trees fighting back,” she said.

“Two of them had girths of over five meters, but they are just obstacles, not living trees to construction teams wanting to wring the last profit from a development irrespective of the cost to the climate and nature. Rather like the fossil fuel giants really.”

After the trees were cut down HS2 said it was sorry and that it did not realise the government was about to pause the project for at ­ least two years.

A section of the park taxi rank was at the front of the bus station Euston Square Gardens.

Last month, the government was reported to have approved a £1billion pair of tunnels from Old Oak Common to Euston. But there are still – 15 years after the project was first announced – no detailed plans for the proposed new terminus at Euston.