Genuinely upset at this wildflower destruction

Actually bindweed is a UK wildflower and very beneficial to wildlife and provides food for pollinators. Yes it does spread easily and is often unwelcome in planted gardens, but the RHS says if you have a wild planted area it’s fine to leave it.

(Unlike non-native invasive species like Japanese knotweed for example which does need to be removed).

https://www.rhs.org.uk/weeds/bindweed

Same here, more and more front gardens on my street are completely paved. it’s so sterile.
Mine is all planted up and wild looking, I love seeing the birds in the tree and the insects on the flowers. Plus it helps my house stay cooler in hot weather.

OP I would be really upset too. I hate seeing unnecessary destruction of nature like that. I think a lot of people don’t understand that wildflowers and native ‘weeds’ aren’t a bad thing and just assume they all need to be chopped down without realising how important they are to the ecosystem.

I think you could put some pots out there and plant them with wildflowers so it’s more obvious that it’s deliberate. You could put up a bee / bug hotel, a bee / butterfly bath etc. Your DCs could make a ‘bug hotel’ sign. So not as brazen as painting the whole fence.

I remember we had two lovely trees on the road outside our house and the council had to chop them down as they were diseased. DD cried when she saw the stump! The road looked so bare.
One neighbour came up to excitedly tell me how great it was the tree outside their house had finally gone as they were fed up with leaves on their car.

Well yes that’s true, but I am sure you will also be moaning about how hot the city gets in summer / how you don’t get so many birds or butterflies in the garden any more / how bad the pollution is etc.

Anyway we helped pay for a new street tree to be planted and the DC helped water it (every week for at least 2 years) so something positive came from it.

I’m one of the only ones on my street who still has a garden full of nature, so many people love the sterile look now

About 18 months ago we had someone dog rough but unaware of it move in nearby. She's all plastic lawn and decking and gravel and even has plastic plants and plastic flowers in the garden. That would be bad enough, but her prerogative; however, she moans about everyone who has actual plants and grass and trees in their garden. Gardens with a bit of nature in them are messy and unclean and attract birds (evil!) and vermin, apparently. (Although, I'm inclined to think that any vermin are more likely to be attracted by her munching crisps as she chainsmokes out the front in her dressing gown, myself.) One of my neighbours has the most beautiful fairytale front garden with a big tree and wildflowers and weathered Edwardian urns and benches to go with the house, and she hates it. There seems to be this modern trend for outdoor spaces to be horribly sterile and controlled.

Vennel, here. Tenfoot where I grew up.

Twitchell, ginnel or jitty here in Notts.

@crackofdoom Well said. Human centric ignorance at its worst.

You're showing yourself up with your ignorance there.

I challenge you to get a wildflower guide and start identifying these "weeds". You'll find there can be dozens of species of beautiful wildflowers growing in a tiny urban space. And then you can start looking up all the insects that rely on these "weeds". (Just as one example- hate nettles? Well, we wouldn't have beautiful tortoiseshell butterflies without them).

And in your researches, you might hear tell of something called "catastrophic insect decline", and the impact that that is having on beautiful birds like swifts, mammals like bats, and- ultimately- on our food supply.

Or maybe you'll just spray the glyphosate around your sterile garden again and moan about food prices going up....🙄

I would be devastated if I were you OP, fucking devastated

😄They're just weeds!

What a shame 😞 But.. I love the word twitten ❤️

West Midlands here and we say gulley, alley, or rat run

Which could easily happen if someone didn’t know what it was. It does happen, and people end up in hospital. So do animals for that matter. Anyway it’s likely not that so beside the point I suppose.

We don't tend to have many back to back terraces in Cornwall, but a narrow alley here is called an ope.

It was called an entry where I grew up in Birkenhead. You'd put your bin, which back then was cylindrical and usually metal, outside your backyard door on Bin Day, and the binmen would fetch them and carry them to the bin lorry. Of course, wheelie bins have put paid to all that.

Do you genuinely think that giant hogweed burns you if you just touch it??

You need to make contact with the sap.

I’m in Kent - it’s not cow parsley. I was picking cow parsley for my horse so I have to know the difference so I don’t accidentally feed him hemlock or hogweed

Just sneaking in to add the word 'vennel' to the thesaurus we're compiling. Scottish word which I know from East Lothian (I don't know how widespread it is)

A hedge around a run-down old house near me used to be alive with birds. Everytime you walked past it in the summer you’d be deafened by birdsong.

The house went up for sale. The new owners razed ALL all the hedges. (I’m sure it’s illegal to destroy a hedge full of nesting birds but they did it.) They removed anything green from the whole plot. They lived in the house for a month and then left.

I’m still upset.

do you think these neighbours actually want to use 'their' side of the twitten/ ginnel/ vennel/ wynd (the last two are Scots words for similar things) in the same way as you/ others in the two streets (i.e. for a compost bin/ toolstore)? or for something else? or are just neat-freaks who can't abide to see somewhere looking 'messy'?

if they don't actually leave their garden and go out there very often, would they even notice if their gateway was erm locked from the outside?

YANBU. Put some citrus fruit peel with eucalyptus oil on it in the area. That deters cats, without harming them. Their cat will find another area to poo.

Bit of difference between a plant that’s poisonous if you eat it and one that burns if you touch it, no?

If you leave it alone it's not going to harm you. Even if it was giant hogweed, which it doesn't look like from the photos. I'm lying in my van on a campsite right now surrounded by deadly poisonous plants (foxgloves), and given that I'm not intending to eat them I'm in no danger at all.