WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll ·
15/05/2019 14:28
We have a hedge at the front boundary of our garden (next to the pavement) which we planted ourselves 5 years ago. We deliberately chose to have a selection of different deciduous native British species and to have them growing independently as individual bushes but tightly together so as to function as a hedge, if that makes sense.
They provide shade and privacy in the summer, when we're likely to be using the garden, and then shed their leaves and look beautiful, bare and wintry once the colder weather comes.
We've nothing at all against single-species evergreen hedges that are cut into a squared off/boxy shape - our NDN has one between their house and ours and it looks nice and defines the boundary well.
Therefore, we have a hedge trimmer which we use regularly to maintain our side of the boundary hedge but use secateurs and loppers to keep our front hedge under control as and when it needs it, whilst still retaining it's free semi-wild 'meadow' look.
We've had a number of very complimentary comments from neighbours about how attractive it looks and nobody has ever said anything negative about it.
However, we keep getting people coming to the door from gardening companies, asking us if we'd like a quote from them to 'get your hedge sorted out', and it's getting very tiresome now. By 'getting it sorted out', they clearly mean firing up their hedge trimmers, taking half an hour to cut it into a boxy shape, which would look ridiculous, and then looking to take probably £50-£100 from us for their trouble.
They always talk about it pityingly as if it's 'obviously' an embarrassment that needs urgently seeing to, because, to their simplistic thinking, it's a hedge, but it isn't 'hedge-shaped'. They often approach us at entirely the wrong time of the year to be pruning them back and just can't get the concept of 'native species' into their heads, even the ones who claim to be 'tree surgeons' (and therefore are probably looking to double the quote on that basis).
Incidentally and completely off the point, I understand that gardening and arboreal care is a very skilled job, but I've just heard an article on the radio about actual surgeons, who treat unborn babies with spina bifida in the womb, so let's keep things in perspective here.
They're amazed when we say "No thank you, that's how it's supposed to look and therefore how we maintain it and we're skint anyway." and persist that, "But I could really smarten it up and make it look bland nice and neat." I wonder if they have colleagues in the building trade who keep travelling to India and offering to 'square-off' all the curved edges of the Taj Mahal to make it look more like a normal office block.
AIBU to think that, if you're going door-to-door touting for business based on your specialised trade (which I hate anyway - just put a leaflet through the door if you must), you should actually have a vague idea about that trade; and then, when gainsaid by the member of the public whose home it actually is, neither persist in demonstrating your ignorance further nor make patronising critical (sometimes insulting) comments and assumptions based on your manifest lack of knowledge?
Do we really have to go to the effort of getting a sign made up to say "Yes, we do know that our hedge doesn't look like most hedges - that's how we like and maintain it, so we aren't interested in paying you good money to completely destroy its character" ? Not that they'd bother reading it anyway....