Why do people want to rip every plant out of their gardens?!

[Turnedtochaos]

Just that.

My NDN have spent the past 2 days pulling up every mature tree, shrub and plant from the fence lines at the back and sides of their garden. Now instead of a view of lovely trees I can see all the houses behind and get a view of 3 families who now have no privacy. I can now see NDN wandering around in wheras before I could see nothing at all!

The plants weren’t shading their massive garden either and were covered in beautiful flowers. Just why?

Before anyone says…I have my own plants but due to the angle it won’t offer any privacy for those behind NDN.

I am rather embarrassed because I have had to put down that awful fake grass in part of my garden because the grass has been ruined by children’s bikes and toys and it’s just a mud or dust bath. However, the rest of the garden is covered with plants and trees and bushes (and weeds!) I can’t understand why people would remove all the nature from their garden.

I agree.
The UK used to be a nation of gardeners.
We are now a nation of hard surfaces and plastic grass, with no privacy or nature.

This is so depressing to read. So sorry OP. Ignorant, ignorant behaviour and such a shame.

Because i don't want to encourage the birds their are to many people around here with cats and I don't want to be picking up dead birds from my garden on a regular basis

Also trees reduce noise and pollution

I live in a small rural village, we moved here to 'live in the countryside' and assumed others did too.

Our various neighbors over the past few years have replaced a large front garden of established shrubs and lawn with wall to wall tarmac (looks like a car park now), neighbours at the back have replaced mixed hedges with gravel boards and fence panels (we had regular hedgehog visitors before that), others have demolished trees and lawns for plastic grass and gravel....

I despair. If they wanted sterile concrete and plastic gardens why move to a rural village? I think it should be banned, if you move rural areas, natural habitat should be protected.

So ignorant and thoughtless to remove nature from your space. If you can't or won't garden at least leave trees and get a few potted plants for pollinators. I suspect I get all the snails in my part of our terraced street as few have anything much going on in the yards but mine is a bit of a riot this time of year and I can sit there watching birds, bees and tadpoles right now.

Well they also have a dog that barks if a mouse breathes too loudly. It looks the part but is too much dog for them to handle but that’s another thread…

When we moved to our current house the garden was awful: Gravel, badly built walls with cracked rendering, hardly any grass or plants. Nearly 5 years' later we have lots of plants, small area of wildflowers, two bird boxes (one has been used this year), grass, flower areas. Previously it would have been dreadful in all this past week's heat but was lovely to walk over the cool grass and find shade under tall bushes and plants.

Magnolia trees are so beautiful. In March time when they're in bloom, I'm jealous of everyone who has one in their garden.

When we bought our house the garden was just grass. Nothing else except weeds. We found an old picture of the garden with beautiful mature shrubs and plants. It’s heartbreaking someone ripped all that out. But we’ve added plants back in and our garden is now back looking gorgeous and full of life!

Have you considered it’s because the “gardens” in new builds are often shoved on top of rubble/hardcore and so it’s hard to have decent grass, and the gardens are tiny with nowhere to store a mower/other stuff? Often very awkward little spaces to deal with.

That’s what I did, I have massive trees now and climbers.

My dad is knocking on and doesn’t want the work, but instead of hiring a gardener (which he could afford to do), he’s systematically denuded his entire garden of every shrub, turfed the flower beds, and also had a huge and utterly gorgeous 60 year old magnolia tree razed to the ground.

Its white candle blossoms and scent and shade in the summer were an intrinsic part of Dsis and my childhood. There’s not a shred of beauty or privacy or life left in what was once a lovely, cosy and biodiverse garden, and he’s got rid of plants our late mum cherished, bird feeders and even a bench she used to sit on. He didn’t give either of us the option to take anything - just took the lot to the tip. Total vandalism, and he was bizarrely unsentimental about any of it, even though he worshipped our mum and knew how much she loved her garden. It now looks like it belongs to a new build - a rectangle of turf with bright orange fence panels all the way around.

We’re heartbroken, but it’s his home and his choice. Like his new partner, he doesn’t mind the garden being completely soulless as long as it’s tidy. The one thing we’ve pushed back hard on is his bright idea to astroturf the whole thing, and we’ve thankfully managed to dissuade him for the time being.

I understand being older and tired and not wanting the work, but the extreme level of destruction was so unnecessary, and our mum would have been devastated to see it.

I don’t think people realise this when moving into new builds. The gardens just can’t sustain much vegetation, especially anything that needs to root deeper. Trees don’t grow well on landfill.

We're in the process of buying a house, it's one of the only ones left on the street with privet hedges either side. It also has a beautiful lilac at the back and (I think they said) a hazel tree halfway up the garden to one side. It looks beautiful and I cannot wait to maintain it! We will be adding a border of plants (2 wild kids mean the plants need to be contained safely for fear of being destroyed by balls).

The front is half driveway and half grass. I'm hoping to replace the grass with a meadow mix to encourage more pollinators. After being stuck in a flat for 5 years, I can't wait to have my own little garden to love ❤️

Wow this is a sad thread. I don’t have a garden, just a couple of flower beds outside our rented apartment that I look after as no one else does. I love it, and I think our neighbours do too - they certainly tell me they love to hear / see the birds and enjoy the random flowers that I manage to grow.

We, unfortunately, are in the process of doing exactly this. And I really hate to think what our neighbours must think of us.

Our mature garden was seriously neglected by the previous owners and nothing has been pruned for years. We’ve had to remove a couple of trees. One was dead, and the other so covered in ivy was not able to be rescued.

We’ve tried to prune some of the shrubs, but they are so unwieldy and dead in the middle that our only option has been to remove them.

We back on to open farmland and had to remove the back hedge, which wasn’t really a hedge, just brambles and ivy with lots of gaps, to put in a fence so our dog doesn’t escape.

We will, of course, replant and replace. But I feel awful when we’re out with the loppers again pulling everything out.

Here is my tiny new build garden. It's triangular (so all corners) and backs onto 5 other gardens. It's north facing.
Just room for a tiny shed for my manual mower and tools. (Plus fairy lights)
Decking made from wood offcuts from my neighbour's posh decking job.
Dug out the rubble (took me a day). Piled it up. Advertised it free to collector.

Sowed grass seed.

Planted a tree I bought for £5 in the 'casualty' section of Homebase.
Planted around the tree with plants (also casualty section/gifts/cheapy buys from Lidl)
Added pots (found in skips/free to collector)

This is it two years on.

The photo of the new garden I've just posted above was taken in a house that was build on a brownfield industrial site.

The tree and all the other plants are thriving.

I chopped down lots of trees in my garden when I moved in. They were overgrown and ugly and in the wrong place. I replanted them with native trees planted in the right places and maintained properly. Mumsnetters also go nuts over trees but you can replace trees easily and they soon grow. I had no qualms at all about chopping down most of the existing trees in my garden. I was particularly glad to cut down some of the evergreens.

Why is it not possible for you to plant your own trees?

I'll bet the "hedge" has lots of bugs that birds love. We have a "hedge" between us and NDN. It never stops moving with birds nesting, pecking grups, etc. It looks so untidy but alive and interesting.

We live in a relatively new build area 10 ish years a good few of neighbours have ripped out every plant and blade of grass. Even worse a few have built monstrous garden room things. I honestly do not get it at all. I’m no gardener but love colour and life as opposed to plastic grass and buildings that take over half of the garden.

Definitely no birds. We watched it for a good few months before we removed it. And no signs of anything nesting when we took it out.

Im not sure what else we could have done to secure the garden.

reading this thread has made me go out and sit in the garden. Listening to the blackbirds now