Genuinely upset at this wildflower destruction

[pelargoniums]

Live in a loooooong terrace that backs on to another similarly long terrace, with a twitten between the streets. All the gardens have a gate onto the twitten for access, but no one uses it for actual access: at one end, street access is bricked up; at the other, it’s so far from most of the houses and emerges on the road with nightmare parking so even if you clear your garden, you get the lads to go through the house because big work trucks can’t get down that road. Plus every spring it becomes impenetrable with overgrown plants and wildlife.

Most of my neighbours keep a compost bin, leaf mould, narrow tool storage etc out there. A general “live and let live” attitude prevails so if you put a tool store out, you stagger it against your opposite neighbour’s so everyone can have space.

And it’s lovely! Behind ours I have compost and leaf mould, plus wildflowers naturally – I’ve never planted anything but there was six foot tall cow parsley, green alkanet, bluebells, loads of things I can’t identify. DC spend a lot of time there bug hunting, it attracts loads of butterflies – the caterpillarfest in spring was amazing – birds, field mice.

The neighbours opposite have razed the lot. Not only on “their” side but mine. They don’t garden, theirs is fully paved. No reason to do this – they can’t get out through a bricked wall and they’ve left the next space along alone, which is solidly rose/bramble/thicket. A whole mini habitat gone. Now it’s just bare earth for the neighbourhood cats to poo in.

AIBU to be gutted but more importantly, how to respond?! I’d love to do a line of pleached trees in the twitten to block them from my sight but they’d only chop them down I think, and also £££. More wildflowers, obviously. While the land is bare the kids want to paint a mural on the wall saying Save Our Wildflowers & Our Planet (because I suggested it to them 😂) and paint butterflies, ladybirds, bees. Or something permanent/evergreen and purposeful on my side that won’t encroach over their half of the space, but is clearly meant to be there – as they obviously felt the natural aspect of the wildflowers was too much nature – but still pollinator-friendly. Japanese hogweed? 😈

Rhs 2 to 4 ft but op doesn't know her cow parsley range so it's probably not cow parsley.

It's a Sussex word 😀

Cow parsley is still flowering here in Kent, and it's massive this year because of the weather conditions.

This is the only photo I have of the unidentified possibly toxic twitten plant – just peeking over the wall, which is 5’6” I’ve just worked out, not 6’. Anyone care to squint and identify it? This is mid-May. Don’t know when it was chopped down.

We never had to go through it as the compost bin is the other side of the gate, and we never wanted to disturb the bugs.

On gardeners world you often see these little back access lanes have been officially claimed by the residents, vehicle access blocked by the council (bollards) and legitimately turned into 'flowering ally ways'.

All sorts of weird and wonderful things used as containers and climbers planted on the garden side allowed to sprawl over simple wooden arches across the alley ect.
Plus a good few flower murals 😊🌺🌸💐
Perhaps if there's enough interest from the neighbours you could initiate this? It tends to only need a couple of enthusiastic neighbours at the beginning and enough 'don't minders and won't objectors' to get these things off the ground.

Most folks these days don't have the interest or headspace to actively object to anything and once it's off the ground a good few will see how lovely it is be inspired and join in 🤞

I'd cheerfully include the neighbours who cut down the weeds as if it hadn't happened.

In that case, plant some wild flowers in pots.

Where do you put your bins ??? (Misses point )

Thinking about this... I'd be worried they are going for a land grab to extend their garden.

Stake your claim to your "half"

like this 😊

@ExtraOnions Front gardens!

It doesn’t sound like there was malice on the part of the neighbours so I don’t think a confrontation would help.
There’s a fairly recent Monty Don series on British gardens where the Northern Ireland episode features a similar alley and all the neighbours have got together to make it ‘wildflower alley’. It was really lovely so I’d use it firstly for ideas on how your stretch of the alley can be made to look more purposeful and less likely to be helpfully cleared. Secondly use as a talking point to explain to the neighbours. My approach would be to actually thank them for their clearing up and say it’s given you a blank canvas to get started.

@Laiste That’s beautiful and perhaps 3x as wide as ours! Lovely paving. Ours turns into a swamp in winter.

Hard to say op without seeing leaves it's the leaf shape that's different and stems on toxic types have purple blotches.

It looks very pretty though maybe something to chat about with pics like laites to encourage people to have a few safe flowers out there.

During Covid, we had a letter from school telling us which doors which classes were going to be using and one class were told to ‘approach school via the twitchell’ and that apparently means one of these paths.

To be honest, to me that looks like unsightly weeds I have to look at over my wall.

@U53rn8m3ch8ng3 You can probably tell from the glimpse of my garden (had to crop out a lot because DS was rampaging mid-photo) that I quite like what Nigel Slater calls a “wild and woolly” garden. (Luckily, as I don’t get much gardening time.) Nothing that flowers is a weed in my book! Don’t even mind a bit of bindweed in the right place.

Long term I want a tree mid-garden to block the view of the houses without blocking their light, so I wouldn’t see the “weeds” anyway. Wish I had a photo of the twitten mid-May: absolutely thriving with bugs.

Doubt it - you’re most likely seeing Hemlock. It looks very similar, all of the umbellifra family are similar, but cow parsley flowers much earlier. In southern Kent CP would be long gone - we are north of the midlands and CP has gone over weeks ago.
Hemlock is like CP on steroids and easily mistaken if you haven’t got your eye in!
Give aways are much bigger plants, often grows as individual plants rather than a big clump like CP, purple blotches on the stems and a horrible mouse like smell if it’s warm.
It really is one to be wary of - the sap is very toxic. It’s what Shakespeare used to poison everyone with in his plays!

Not directly relevant but it's great how there are so many different words for a ginnel.

But that's fine, for your garden. Not for an alleyway which you say is not even your property. Whether or not people use is it, according to you, is neither here nor there if it's council owned land that's supposed to be clear.

Yeah, I'll probably not put it in a salad.

A ginnel! Never heard of that either! It's just an alleyway or maybe path or passage to me

Have to say I’ve never seen purple blotches on stems in the stuff in the countryside round us – usually gather mounds of it for vases, so see it up close, but this is earlier in spring. Realise my OP sounds like it’s there now, but I haven’t been out the back in a while, there’s been no need. Photo is 16 May.

I'm from Greater Manchester and never heard of a ginnel until I was an adult, as we didn't live in a terraced house.

I give you Snicket.

I live in Sussex. Never heard anyone say that