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? 😈

I think it looked better before.

Don't worry, op, it will all be back in a couple of weeks.

was going to share this one too. Learned it when we immigrated to Scotland (to edinburgh for what it’s worth)

personally I wouldn’t say anything and just deliberately plant new things in pots so they know it’s meant to be there. They might have had concerns or thought it should be cleared or have had a reaction to something growing there as you aren’t even sure what it all was.

Our untidy front garden, which has, at one time or another, apple tree, elderflower, rose, buddleia, cotoneaster, violets, columbine, bluebells, moonwort, buttercups, ferns, sedum, and whatever else might blow in. We usually sow nasturtium in planters, but I had an accident in February so DH has been too busy helping me to get round to that. Below the window we've put two garden chairs with a little makeshift table between them, so in fine weather, we can sit out and eat breakfast, snacks etc. I also read or do knitting or crochet while I listen to audiobooks on Bluetooth headphones. Sitting there, I can almost forget that the street is just the other side of the hedge.

Now I want a twitten!

As an aside we have a re wilding path on our estate and my children made a bug hotel. Super cute and a fun project.

Ah, I can see why you're cross OP. That looked beautiful and a creepy crawlies heaven no doubt. Often the best thing we can do for nature is leave it well alone!

So many regional variations for the same thing! Also wynd in parts of Scotland, and in Neston where my parents live there are signs with "weint" on them.

Aww that's sad. Some people just like bare ground. Sorry you've been saddled with them as neighbours. Get some cornfield annuals in and make the ground look cultivated like you've done it on purpose. The kids doing that sign is a good idea.

This is gorgeous! Feeling very inspired now by this and a pp suggestion of brambles – I’ve been planning a thornless blackberry bush anyway – and the idea of curating the twitten a bit more as a community project.

We’re outside the bounds of the Weald to Waves wildlife corridor but every bit of rewilding helps.

In general I think the neighbours would be up for it: we have an informal “library of things” for swapping gardening and DIY tools, and the group chat is usually ablaze with wildlife spots. We had a badger waddling down the road once!

Sounds like the neighbours would be well up for a group project then. Keep us updated OP!

But claiming to be "fucking devastated" is insane! That's the sort of phrase a normal person would only use if they lost a loved one, or their marriage broke down. MNers have a terrible tendency for attention-seeking, melodramatic phrasing. People use "devastated", "heartbroken" and "grief-stricken" at the drop of a hat. A poster recently said "I really do feel like I'm grieving" because she didn't like how her hair looked in her wedding photos.

If you're not fucking devastated about what's happening to the natural world and our planet in general, then you simply haven't been paying enough attention.

And when you think "Well, what can I do? At least I can manage my little patch as best I can to encourage a few insects and birds", and then some oblivious moron looks up from Love Island for long enough to raze that tiny, tiny patch- then yes, you are fucking, fucking, FUCKING devastated.

I honestly wonder what it's going to take for people like you to wake up.

This is a complete overreaction. I haven't even been on holiday abroad in years because of environmental concerns. But being "fucking devastated" over wildflowers isn't healthy.

Oh really? Thanks for telling me I had NO idea!

fucking Mumsnet sometimes, I swear to god

If they just strimmed it, all the roots will be there, so it'll grow back. Meanwhile, I'd probably sow something quick and easy like a load of calendula. Or you could just get a wildflower seed mix.

(Umbellifers are a very interesting plant family, with everything from carrots and parsley to hemlock, so you don't want to get them mixed up. And i prefer umbelliferae to apiaceae, whatever taxonomists think.)

plant some mexican daisies,
they are lovely

or some creeping purple thyme

@EleanorReally We have loads of Mexican daisies in the front and back garden – they grow so well on chalky Sussex soil! It’s a good shout to do those and creeping thyme and as they’re not tall, it keeps the walkway-for-access feel but with a floral vibe. Also: low maintenance!

DD is already getting carried merrily planning the world’s most complicated insect, snail and small mammal combined mansion complex – lots of crayon architectural drawings this weekend.

The problem is one persons lovely wildflower patch is another persons hideous weed strewn mess.

There was a thread on here the other day about someones fence being destroyed by brambles because the neighbours would not maintain them. No doubt the neighbours thought it was a lovely nature reserve.

"Wild" areas full of weeds aren't great to have next door if you are a gardener trying to cultivate a nice lawn or flowerbeds because the seeds just spread in the wind and ruin your efforts. High weeds also provide cover for mice and rats.

I think areas for wilding are best kept away from houses and more suited to places like woodland or open space grassland. A 10m2 patch of weed strewn scrub in the middle of a housing estate isn't going to do much for biodiversity and generally just looks as much of a mess as the house with an old sofa dumped out the front.

I feel your pain OP. We have a wild food garden (we're ecologists), and are surrounded on all sides by manicured lawns and sprayed everything. We've tried to gently explain our goals and share interesting new fruits etc but it falls on deaf ears. Its really dispiriting.

Again, I say: you clearly haven't been paying enough attention. Look up "catastrophic insect decline".

Gardens and urban areas are providing an increasingly important refuge for nature on our built up island. When you look at what industrial agriculture has done to the majority of the countryside, these little oases are sometimes all we have left.

🤦‍♀️

Well nature doesn’t work that way, does it? You can’t just have your nice manicured gardens, with lawns and flowerbeds of only approved tidy looking plants, and then banish the ‘weeds’ and the insects and animals you don’t like to somewhere else, where they won’t mess up your lawn.

Gardens are actually a vital source for biodiversity in the U.K. and provide food and habitats for wildlife. Many natural habitats have been destroyed, which is why for example bird species are in decline and there is huge concern about the decline of insects and bees. 3/4 of our crops rely on pollinators and 87% of flowering plants rely on them for reproduction. A quick Google would have told you this.

You might think a wildflower area looks as bad as an old sofa, but that’s how we have been conditioned to think.

Where are you going to get the plants for your nice flowerbeds if there are no insects left to pollinate them??

@Swoopingswift Well said!

I grew up shadowing my mum and grandma in the garden – lots of generous applications of Round-Up, slug pellets, Ammonium Sulphamate. My mum used to get me to dig up dandelions from the grass and ensure I got the tap root out, she never let them turn to dandelion clocks in case we blew them, she waged a successful war on the neighbour’s bindweed and eradicated it from her (admittedly very beautiful) garden. She used manure and compost too, but chemicals, fury and constant vigilance were key.

When I first had my own garden at university and then at various houseshares ever since, I was anti-weed and did what I’d been taught – chemicals and eradication. Then at my first big garden at our last house, I got into composting, rain barrels, companion planting; but still suppressing weeds with mulch, doing lasagne gardening, eradicating stuff by digging it out and squishing it.

Now, in my forever garden, I’m like, “What is a weed?” I’ve got campanula and fleabane everywhere purposefully on the laughable patio (wonky concrete slabs laid on soil by the last owner) to disguise it, along with anything that wants to grow in the cracks. Herb Robert popping up everywhere – used to make me furious and now I leave it. Daisies, clover, buttercups and dandelions are starting to get into the lawn I turfed and I’m encouraging them along: it looked like astroturf when I first laid it and now it looks alive! Sticky willy crept in from the neighbours and it’s not so bad: entertains the kids throwing it at each other. If I want to see a very manicured garden I visit the National Trust; my garden is great for butterflies and bees and terrifying crawly things and getting to be a bit more hands-off. There’s enough to do without weeding!

It’s been interesting reading the RHS mag for a long time and seeing the increasing establishment embrace of weeds, wild gardening, letting nature do its thing, clearing up a little less.

@pelargoniums Was it this plant? Were the leaves like this? Cow parsley doesn’t get tall enough to peek over a wall.