To sweep leaves into the road

[thinkfast]

There is a huge tree on the pavement outside our house. It's the only one of its kind on our long road. It blocks out all the light to the front of our house, drips sticky sap and leaves. The rest of the road has much smaller mostly cherry trees around 10ft or so. We have repeatedly asked the council to replace it with a smaller tree, similar to the rest of the road, but they refuse.

Our front garden is currently full of its leaves. Would I be unreasonable to sweep them onto the pavement, as they aren't our leaves, they come from the council's tree. The alternative is that I have to book and pay for a garden waste collection.

Shocking grammar there!

If you are blowing/sweeping them into the road as my nephew or any of his motorcycling mates are passing they will stop to educate you. You will be told you are creating an enormous slip hazard for both motorcyclists and cyclists.

Just use some common sense please.

Yes, @ChardonnaysPetDragon he was a planning officer here on other duties. He said he had worked as an arboriculturalist previously, the tree in question is dying anyway and is likely to fall on to our fencing and new deck and damage it or injure us. But it isn’t a problem anymore...

Why not sweep them up and put them in the garden waste bin?

We have loads of massive trees in our street, so I get it's a bit annoying it is but I quite like having the trees, they are nice to look at. The neighbour next door blows them off their property onto the road and the neighbours property though.

Just rake them up into piles, oraround your plant’s bases and they’ll rot down pretty quickly. If you do piles stamp them down, they’ll take up very little room. We must have several massive trees dropping leaves onto our garden and that’s what we do.

Whys is the tree not a problem anymore?

The tree was here before my family bought this house - about 40 years ago. It was not that big then. I think it's a Norwegian maple. It's now very tall and leafy.

I can't sweep them round the base of plants in the front garden. We have a hedge, which I couldn't get to the base of, and a smallish bush which would be swamped by this many leaves. Not much grows under the tree. We don't have a garden waste collection. I'm going to ask the council if they will provide purple bags.