People getting rid of their trees, gardens 'n' stuff.

[hiddenhome]

I'm feeling increasingly upset about people who have their trees cut down (unless they're dangerous/dead/diseased etc.) and who get rid of their gardens and just have this minimalist stuff going on.

Our neighbours, one by one are doing all of the above and hardly any of us have proper front gardens now

We have a large monkey puzzle tree in our front garden which is in good condition and passers by stop and admire it. I love it, but men keep knocking on our front door and offering to either cut it down or make it smaller! You can't do that to a monkey puzzle and it would break my heart if somebody knobbled it in that way.

I feel under attack from these idiots and have resorted to being quite rude to them

Why don't people seem to like their gardens? It's all concrete, gravel, paving, plants in pots and space for cars these days.

Sorry for the rant, it's just that I love my garden and want me and my trees to be left alone .

About a week after we'd finished digging over, planting and turfing our front garden (which had been a hideous wilderness) someone came and knocked on the front door to ask if we wanted a driveway!

Unfortunately a baby and toddler mean it is nothing like that beautiful now but I'd rather have greenery than a drive.

And whatever you do don't try and make a monkey puzzle smaller - they really don't like pruning and anyone who's offering to try clearly doesn't know much about them!

Honestly, you are right, they know nothing about them. It's so frustrating because these people aren't tree surgeons, just blokes with some tools Monkey puzzles are so beautiful. They hurt, but are lovely

The neighbour two doors down had her small pear tree cut down. Another neighbour completely removed all the shrubs, bushes and a tree and now has some zen paradise with carefully arranged pots and gravel.

The bloke up the road has just had a perfectly nice tree cut so that all that's left is the main trunk with a couple of bald branches sticking out of it - no greenery, just the wood

A large tree by the side of the path has been cut down - not dangerous or causing any problems, just growing there minding its own business.

No wonder garden birds are dying out

I used to get so annoyed at our rented house that was all gravel. We had pots everywhere full of veg and other plants, but the gravel was harder work than the garden we have now, and much less fun. Leaves had to be picked up one by one, the gravel got everywhere and it hurt the kids when they fell over.

It is just so sad. What is wrong with a nice lawn? I can kind of see it with elderly people (although I would be more than happy to mow a neighbours lawn and do a bit of weeding for them)

Our back garden is basically an allotment at the moment, mind, but we have flowers at the front, and lots of municipal grass for the kids to play on (mostly landscaped slag heaps, but you can't tell)

You see some houses with what used to be massive gardens, I bet they were lovely, bigger than the house, and now they are concrete.

You'd kind of hope they would donate the garden they weren't using to a community group, get some kids growing veg. But then I rage at the massive mostly unused playing fields at the sixth form, with padlocked gates all round them :(

When you think of the waiting lists for allotments, and the families struggling to eat healthily, kids who don't know where a potato comes from, and big space like that not being used. Isolated eldery people could help local children and the sixth form students to make a lovely flower garden or something. Such a shame.

At least let the kids on to play football!

I agree, everyone seems to have retreated into their houses and refuse to enjoy the outdoors now. There's nothing nicer than trees, grass, open spaces and flowers. It's good for the soul and people seem to have forgotten all this.

Well done for preserving your garden

Alan Titchmarsh should have some sort of national drive to reinstate all this lost/wasted greenery.

The minimal look for gardens - no shrubs, plain grass or lots of gravel, few plants, is really bad for wildlife. Many garden bird species struggle in areas where gardens are minimal like this and is it also very bad for hedgehog populations which will be low in areas of minimal gardens.

I'm in a semi - front garden is about 10m. Drive is long enough to park two if not three cars nose to tail, and we managed to park three width ways so that you could drive any of them out. I have planted 3 trees and dug up quite a bit of grass to make the borders a bit wider.

Next door have just had their 'driveway' done. They had to stop to wait for the delivery of more paving - because they decided to make their borders even narrower. They now have borders around the edge of max 50cm and the rest is paved. Nice leylandii hedge planted along the front.

lurvely mistlethrush Leylandii are 'orrible and they all die in the middle and become all brown and powdery after a few years. Your trees will still look great when your neighbour's leylandii are only fit for firewood

selks I agree about the wildlife problem. I think this is why so many bird species are declining . I try to make our front garden a haven for them by having the trees, shrubs and a birdtable. We also have the hose running for the birds in the hot weather and they all come for baths. We have a frog living under our sage bush and I'm nagging dh to build a small wildlife pond for it.

I agree OP and in my own small way I am trying to redress the balance. My 10m * 10m garden boasts 2 pear trees, 2 peach trees, 3 apple trees, a nectarine tree and an olive tree. We still have planty of room for borders, lawns and flowers. Trees dont have to be enormous, we have deliberately gone for trees with dwarfing rootstock to keep them to an appropriate size for the garden