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 was at Bloom today. It's a big garden show in Dublin. There are 20 show gardens on display. I went once before Covid and the gardens were amazing. This year they were all very monochromatic. Practically all the gardeners used mainly purple flowers. There was no vibrance.
At one of the talks the professional gardeners were talking about how people don't like yellow flowers any more.
It just seems mad to me. I love purple with orange in the garden. I always have marigolds and nasturtiums every because I like how cheerful they are.

I pulled up some sections of my garden because they weren't 'me' and I wanted to plant natives and make a pollinator friendly garden. I got fast growing plants to take their place. Several years later, it's looking so much nicer, and the pollinators are loving it. Just one 'why'.

I would hate that OP. I love my garden, seeing the birds and insects gives me so much joy. There’s a robin family this year who keep following me round the garden!

I wonder if many of the people who rip out all their trees and shrubs realise it will make their house hotter? We have planting and trees back and front, and it really does help keep the house cool. Most of my neighbours have concrete driveways, I am one of the few with a planted front garden. Why do I want to look outside onto hot concrete paving and a metal car? Instead I can look out to flowers and birds and bees.

In this heatwave we haven’t felt the need to escape anywhere. In fact one of the coolest places in the house is the room that opens onto the shaded narrow side alley which I have filled with ferns and climbers, the air is always cool there. On the hottest day I just sat in a chair next to the door, it was lovely.

That’s so sad. I don’t care what colour my flowers are, I just want ones that will attract butterflies and bees!

My father once did this. He cut down an entire row of mature trees (nothing glamorous, just sycamore and hawthorn, but mature) between him and a row of new houses that had been built on the field next door. He thought they ‘looked untidy’, and was completely taken aback and very cross when two of the neighbours complained afterwards because now they were in full view of their kitchen window! He thought of himself as doing them a favour by ‘tidying up’!

He is an incredibly black and white thinker and has absolutely no concept of anything aesthetic or of privacy. My mother (who is the gardener of the two) once went out to the supermarket and when she came back, dad had cut back a large, mature camellia that was just about to come into bloom, right back to the trunk. Again, he was baffled and cross that she was upset! He was ‘tidying up’.

We dont see this a lot but dh and I have been bemused by our neighbours who have recently installed new paving - lovely, their old patio was bare xoncrete- but have extended it to twice the depth. They noe have a massive patio then a tiny bit of grass and then a veg garden. V odd.

We are not keen or good gardeners so our garden has less in it than we would like but we have slowly added shrubs and plants that are low maintenance and lovely.

Why i love my garden.

Older people in my family were gardeners and we were taught to treat a garden like a farm, an all year round event.
I have removed a large section of old light hogging firs ( not privacy), but replanted the whole area with rolling year colour and dead hedges from our cutting. We've so far had our cherry blossom out, daffodils, our bees from the dead hedges are huge! Now into elder season, hedges growing, and all the shrubs and fruit trees coming alive. Roses are starting and should continue in summer. A garden isn't a garden if something isn't doing it's thing, be that even death and dormancy in winter.

Yes, I loathe plastic grass but I can completely understand why some people have it.

PP said a lawn is the easiest to maintain and all you need to do is mow it once a month - perhaps so if you have moisture retentive soil and you get enough rainfall. We've been slowly replacing our lawn with beds and little patio areas because we just couldn't keep a lawn going without insane quantities of water. The little bit we have left has been a dust bowl since the middle of April it's been so dry this spring.

So next door have put down plastic grass and I can't say I blame them - they just want somewhere for the kids to run around and it's that or paving, which is not nice when they fall over. I wonder if there's some sort of eco play surface you can get which is not plastic but which will last a few years before it rots away and needs replacing.

I wonder how much increased drought has been a factor in the current trend for barren gardens. Even without a lawn it's been a lot of work this year just to keep things green and we're only just going into June. If I didn't really enjoy gardening it would be very easy to just say fuck it and pave it all over.

I was thinking about this recently, when I had noticed a really gorgeous front garden.
i realised that it’s becoming quite unusual to have a proper garden at the front- we all seem to be turning them into drive ways.
Cars are winning.

pencil lawns don't need water. They "die" in heatwaves and go brown and crispy but come back in autumn.

I often say if I was in charge of repairing environmental damage I would give each household a £50 grant that can only be spent on plants that were good for pollinators and I’d ban plastic grass and weed killer.

We have pebbles at the front and astro at the back, but have loads of plants as well.

And no, we don’t vote reform lol.

I have a complete riot of different colours in my back garden, if I like the plant and it clashes with the one next to it when it flowers, I don't care, its beautiful and the birds certainly don't care either, they're all over it.

A carefully planted one colour garden is not for me. 😁

You can make your own matcha if you grow Camellia sinensis.

I think it's so important for children to grow up with plants, particularly food plant. We changed the backyard in our old house into a garden, it seemed so much bigger once it was full of plants, we had an apple tree, a plum tree, cherries, raspberries, goosberries, blackcurrents, rhubarb - lots of fruit and herbs basically. My kids have many happy memories of it (mainly of eating raspberries straight off the plants!). Sadly the new owners ripped out all the plants and put down plastic. Arseholes.

We've inherited a mature garden in this house so have only fill in gaps (although we did remove the weed filled rockery and replaced it with a herb garden). Some people two doors up have just ripped out all the plants in their garden, and nothing has been planted there yet. Thankfully our new NDNs have been busy planting lots of beautiful plants in their garden after it was neglected for years.

She’s probably breaking the law. At this time of year it’s illegal to cut down trees while birds are nesting.

Lots of reasons, you know what they are but just don't agree with them.

I particularly liked the person angry because someone painted a door on a house they sold.

I hope you all are busy conservationsits, lobbying both local and national government about the issues that tree felling causes? Or is it only when someone else cuts their own trees down and now you don't have the privacy you once had?

Our neighbours complained wben we moved the hedges from our garden.

But... they wete 1.5m thick. On all sides. And 7ft tall.
The garden was dark and claustrophobic. The roots were causing issues for our other neighbours. Anything in our garden was dying from lack of moisture etc.

Five years on.. we have a thriving vegetable patch, and flowering borders. The grass isnt dying from lack of sunlight (although a bit yellow at the moment due to the heat.

The lavender in tbe front garden attracts dozens of bees. Its lovely

The neighbour admits it looks better now. She just liked the security of the tall hedge... in someone elses garden!

And are natural windbreaks. Cutting down shrubs, trees etc. means the house is more exposed to the elements.

Some beautiful, majestic trees have been cut down in my area. The grey trend is spreading to once beautiful, green, vibrant areas. 🙁

Mainly because their parents didn’t garden and showed no interest in it and they don’t know what to do now they have one. Their parents might have had a hanging basket. And that was it.
It all looks like a lot of work.
Because they have adopted the no clutter approach and extended it to the garden.
Because they have no eye. No real individual style. And follow what other people do.

A big sadness is all the paved over front gardens you see a lot. Years ago when the houses were built they would have been well kept front gardens. People may have had one car out the front in the road. Not three.
The paving over, combined with millions of types of different dustbins brings the neighbourhood down. It doesn’t elevate it.

@PencilsInSpace " I wonder if there's some sort of eco play surface you can get which is not plastic but which will last a few years before it rots away and needs replacing."

You can buy Play Bark from the garden centre. It's bark that's shredded up really small. Completely clean and safe, mulches down gradually but you can just keep topping it up.

If you need lots it's often cheaper to order a dumpy bag and have it delivered.

The great thing about this is it improves the soil as it rots down so, by the time your children are growing up and you're starting to fancy a pretty garden and a bit of gardening you'll have beautifully rich soil for your new planting scheme.

This is Crocus. https://www.crocus.co.uk/

You can use their brilliant filter system to get exactly what you want e.g. pink evergreen plants for a sunny spot.

They aren't cheap so if you can make a list of the plants you need then shop around.

I know a man who bought a house with a beautiful magnolia tree, he chopped it down because he didn’t like the leaves and petals dropping on his Astro turf.

He was an ignorant chav, no other explanation. Put in a hot tub and a bar. Fucking awful. He has loads of money too, so unfortunately his bad taste just keeps on emanating around us.

Your Acer will probably stand a much better chance in the ground than it will in a pot that keeps drying out or gets water logged.

To be honest though, Acers arent' the best choice for a very hot sunny garden like yours.

Just a couple of tips that might improve your garden and make life easier.

It really isn't that much work to make a tree thrive in a rubble filled/new build garden.

Choose a good tree for your garden. Go to an independent garden centre (not like B&Q) and describe your garden and ask them to recommend a suitable tree.

A crab apple would be lovely. Likes the sun. Beautiful blossom in spring (for pollinators) and then crab apples to look at (and for the birds) all winter.

Buy a tree in a pot and a bag of compost.

Go home. Dig a hole two or three times the size of the pot. Pull out any big stones you come across. Then mix together the soil you have dug up with some of the compost you've bought.

Plant the tree in the hole so the top of the pot soil is level with your garden.

Firm the whole thing in and water it. Like a whole watering can of water.

The planting bit of the above will take you no more than a couple of hours and YAY you have a tree.

Keep watering it and weed all around it for the first year.

It'll thrive, I promise.

You say you have plans to plant trees, well the old saying is that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago...meaning that then it will be big, established and you'll be very glad you did.

Honestly, just do it. Your future self will be very grateful.