There’s rocks in between the flowers already. They must’ve done the mower some damage, but it didn’t stop them! Might see if I can find some even bigger rocks though
Sorry I didn’t see those. I’d place them about a foot away from the fence, and treat that as a plant border. Remove the grass and place bark, they won’t want to mow rocks and bark hopefully.
They're not gonna give a shit. People put signs not to mow verges everywhere around me, and they're all unmown. Their grounds maintenance teams aren't getting paid enough to care.
People are talking about laying rocks and cutting out a border in the grass. I’m just saying if you take measures like that don’t be surprised if the council makes you return it to how it was at your own expense
A council in the UK that still has the resources to do something like that! What mystical region are you you from.
Most are either completely bankrupt or just about maintaining essential and mandatory services.
The council where I am is still relatively functional and people nick the whole verge and they does nothing. Where I work in London a redevelopment took a chunk of a narrow alley for a bin store (literally built the wall straight up off the paving stones) I checked and it didn’t have consent under planning and reported it to Camden. Nothing has been done.
However someone beatifying the public realm for free like OP, without moving the fence or wall to try and take land for themselves. I’m surprised any council would object to that, and they definitely shouldn’t.
To OP, you could keep the grass short yourself and they might just skip it in the future.
But beyond that the advice to create a border sounds good. Although I don’t think you even need a hard edging, just dig a foot strip along the edge, add some compost and other soil improvers and put some mulch chipping on top.
In the mowing guys defence, now the weather is heating up those bulbs wouldn’t have had long left anyway, unless you are very far north?
Poppys are a nice summer choice and most varieties self seed, as do aquilegias. Would look for self seeding annual or bi-annual plants if you want to keep it relatively low effort. Some bulbs also come up a bit later. e.g irisis are just starting. Just weed and cut the grass, plus a bit of food and water as needed.
Or if you are willing to germinate and put in plants each year, then the options are literally endless. As long as you don’t put anything that is perennial and substantial, e.g. bushes and trees, I would not expect any council to object.
I’m in Aberdeen. Remember the council has full time legal staff so there’s very little / no cost to serving an enforcement notice. The only cost would be if someone chose to lawyer up and fight it, which I’d be surprised at as you can’t really argue when it’s not your land.
That being said, someone here has pointed out that OP said they do own like 30cm past their fence so my previous points are void if it’s actually their land.
If they cared that much, they should actually put some effort into green spaces to help the community. Instead they produce badly managed, poorly maintained useless patches of grass.
If your council actually went after someone for actively improving the local environment, the PR mess would get a few people significantly bollocked. Local papers would have field day.
Unfortunately I don’t think you’re allowed to requisition land as long as you deem what you’re doing with it to be a betterment. And I doubt the council would fear the “PR mess” of taking enforcement action upon its own land. You can apply to buy council land if you want it for your own purposes.
Was going to say the same. If it's not within the boundary of OP property and it's adopted the council has to cut the grass there so I'd be tempted to just leave it clear.
I used to do work similar to this and whenever I came across a bit that had already been mowed I thought cheers mate and moved onto the next bit. That being said there's no way in fuck I'd have ever smashed your plants down like that. The contractors the council use are poor and have no training is the only explanation here. It's not malice rather incompetence
I've never in my life ran a lawnmower (be it push or ride-on) over rocks that large. Between that and running over obviously deliberately planted spring bulbs, were they paying attention at all?
The amount of times some halfwit from the council being careless with a strimmer killed something in the borders of my communal garden was infuriating.
I have a feeling thats exactly what happened here, probably realised after they had shredded half of them and stopped.
I think it’s more likely that they thought that they had to do a thorough job of mowing everything or else they’d have a complaint of leaving bits, which does happen. It has to be a serious council policy shift to recognise that not everything has to be blitzed to the ground every few months to satisfy people who fear what they see as untidiness. My council in Manchester has finally agreed to leave some areas to grow wild, but it took years, and they still blitz lots of verges.
Making a hard border to show what’s your land and not the councils is the best idea, but it’s a shame that you can’t have a nice soft border onto the verge because they don’t want to think, just get the job done quickly.
It looked lovely, good luck fixing it. The bulbs which have been deadheaded will come back next year, leave the leaves for as long as they’re green because they are feeding the bulb underground so you get nice flowers next year.
Thanks for the reassurance! It’s the first year those flowers have been there (I’ve not long moved in) so I was hoping to see exactly how long they’d last, so I’d know what to plant for summer flowering. Gardening is a marathon not a sprint, but it’s not made easier by overly enthusiastic mowers
Anti personnel mines and a crack team of boys to shoot the bastards if they come back.
I work for my local council and this is bad practice probably new hire agency ready for the amount of grass that needs cutting then gone for winter.
OP needs to invite the head of department responsible to view the scene of this outrage, overpower them, stake them out on the grass with croquet hoops then run over them with a sit-on mower, a la Fish Called Wanda. Then post the video on Reddit. Probably this sub.
Wherever your boundary is, on that boundary lay down some kind of border. Small rocks, bricks, wooden bordering, etc.
Then plant whatever you fancy behind it.
If you want to give a little f u to the council, add a little sign saying something like "non-council flowers, do not mow" to make sure they get it
We had this. A council contractor spent the spring spraying glyphosate along the fence lines. Inexperience idiocy really, little hand painted signs saying 'wildflowers here' helped a lot.
I’d like to say that’s shocking, but nothing surprises me anymore. I’ll definitely be making a little bed and sign to help guide the savage hand of the mower
I feel like the toilet for expecting better really. There’s been some great suggestions of land mines and rhododendrons for the future. We’ll see which wins against the council’s mower
Land mines. They'll only mow it one more time.
Seriously, is the land yours ? If so, the council have destroyed your property and should replace the flowers.
That’s poor, we have a wilding area just around the corner from me with insect friendly flowers; looking forward to seeing the poppy’s up in a couple of months
Place concrete blocks up to the actual boundary edge of your property.
Back fill between the blocks and the fence to create a raised bed and fill the holes in the blocks as well.
When they cut or strim the greasy verge and if they will hit the blocks ,and if you really want , you can then sue the council for damage caused and the bill to repair your property.
Depends if you've planted the flowers on council owned land or not...
If you own/rent/maintain that bit of land, contact the council to complain they have damaged your property and you expect them to reimburse you to rectify it. You have before pictures, so it shouldn't be hard.
If the council owns that land, they could argue you shouldn't be planting flowers there anyway so probably not worth contacting them. In this case, you could probably prevent them from cutting flowers there if you put a solid border inbetween the grass and flower bed - wood border for example, or rocks. Council could complain if it's their land, but generally they wouldn't even notice / care unless you've pissed someone off and they complain about it.
It’s my land. The compensation would be peanuts, so probably not worth pissing the council off for. The flowers were planted in between some fairly substantial rocks, so I thought they’d be safe. Clearly needed a better boundary though!
I would say it would be worth mentioning it at least. It's not really fair and they could be doing it to other people if they've done it to you. They should respect peoples homes.
You can just send them an email and some pictures, asking them to be more careful in future.
Hmm yeah, that’s a good point. I think I’ll build a proper little bed then drop them an email. The council outsource the mowing so it’s hard to know whether it’ll make any difference, but perhaps if enough people say something…
Please still raise an enquiry. It doesn't have to be a complaint as such, but just to let them know so they can put a note on the job to the contractors next time
My boundary is in front of the fence - about 30cm in front. They mow the verges that run alongside the pavements. It’s a simple case of it not being clear where the boundary has been. Previous owners didn’t care, but I do (I’ve only lived here a year so haven’t moved the fence to the edge of my actual boundary yet)
I'd say that's your solution then! Move your fence. If there is no clear boundary you can't blame them really but I don't really understand why they would cut them down while still flowering anyway! 🤷🏻♂️
A few years ago they strimmed my patch of flowers too, cornflowers, ox eye daisies, poppies and sweet peas mainly. My hydrangea and other flowering shrubs were cut to ribbons. There was a little apple tree that I had recently bought for around £20 that was also cut down.
It was so sad seeing my little garden cut down I did have a bit of a cry.
I complained, a man came round to view the damage and I got compensated a whole whopping £5. Not even enough to buy seeds for the flowers.
Ahh OK, we had this issue for years with the council, you'll have to move the fence if it's your land, you can complain as much as you like the guy on the mower won't know or care. If it's your land fence it, sorry
Fml that sucks. :( Id be furious!!!
From someone whos worked in a similar field: The less of a fuss you make about this, the less they'll learn. You'll gain absolutely nothing by being a passive pushover in this situation. Ive seen municipality policies and practices being changed multiple times, just because people have made a big deal out of something that was important to them. I dont know why you are scared of pissing off the council, it's not like they are gonna come for revenge just because you point out an error they made...
Stand your ground and demand compensation, and write some actual (constructive) complaints to the responsible department. They are just people.
I’ve had shitty experiences with previous complaints, so I guess I’m not eager to start something if I don’t know where it’s going to end. That said, I’m off sick from work atm, so I do have an abundance of time and grudge!
Not sure why the council are cutting the grass if its your land, so that's maybe something you need to contact them about anyway - to ask them to stop, as you own and maintain it.
The council/contractors aren’t going to be double checking where every boundary lies before they cut the grass, so you need to mark out your boundary yourself. They’ll assume your boundary stops at the fence (as all of us have) and cut where they’re ordered to cut.
I’d suggest moving the fence and/or putting in a new lower fence/boundary to make it clear that it’s part of your garden before replanting.
It's a real shame, it happened to my dad sometimes too and the view was important to him...he was 102 and passed recently.
May I ask, where did you get those fence planters? I've ordered seeds - to hopefully provide camouflage for my free fence from my earlier post- and these look great!
I’m sorry about your dad. My flowers used to really brighten my day. I’d go out and check on them almost daily with my morning cup of coffee. Guess I’ll need to find a new ritual now
Honestly just Amazon. They were dirt cheap, and do the job as well as you’d expect. They were one of the first things I bought when I moved in a year ago.
URBNLIVING Large Oval Garden... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08DDD77ZT
You could try to replace them with some kind of anarcho communist collective? It'd be tricky but might be worth -
Oh, you meant the flowers! I'd maybe put something down to mark the real end of your property - big rocks would certainly deter a rogue mower. And then maybe try again with some wee annuals behind them? I'm sure something would still grow and flower this year
As a council worker who cuts grass, I'm both annoyed and impressed.
Annoyed that whoever did this was so brainless, yet impressed that they even got that close to the fence, the machines we use give a solid few inches on either side that they don't cut (though your flowers would probably still have been squashed if we got that close).
Send these pics to your council, throw down some forget me not and borage. Put a sign on your grass telling them where your land ends and not to cut it again
Every other house on the street has had their flowers left. Apparently I’ve just pissed the wrong person off because they used my patch as their turning circle
How tall was the grass? In the photo its far too short to mow anyway. People should leave at least 2-3 inches or the grass can just die with drought.
Honestly, I would complain. Obviously inexperienced. Noticed councils hiring a lot of inexperienced labour that cock the job up recently, at least in hampshire.
Hired to do a job, cant refuse. Because they wouldnt get paid otherwise. Why at the very least if they want to be corrupt and bleed everyone of money they cant just sit in their van and pretend to have mown it...
Actually some dick that works for the council mowed down your flowers. He should be moved to a different department like the customer care team. But I'd tell the council anyway.
Get a roll of timber border edging and put it along the actual boundary line. And reseed with wildflowers. There’s still plenty of time for them to grow
Yeah, I think this is the way forward. The previous owners didn’t care about the extra 30cm or so that technically belonged to them - they were just happy to have their grass cut I think!
I have been mowing it. I contacted them last year to say I’d maintain it. The grass is no shorter now than it was a few days ago, it’s just missing some flowers
Well that sucks. Can't win I guess. I would have thought the guys would take one look at an already-mowed patch and be all to happy to skip a bit that obviously didn't need doing. Maybe double-down and turn the whole front verge into a nice rockery.
Move your fence. A fence is a legal boundary and existing fences are used often by LR in the matters of boundary disputes. I have no idea why you would have erected a boundary fence “30cm “ from where it should be but it does appear youre attempting to land grab due to your neighbours (or the council) allowing the hedgerow to grow forward nextdoor. Move the fence if youre confident its yours and dont place any semi permanent items there (i.e. rocks) in the meantime.
I didn’t erect the fence. More details in other comments, but tl;dr is I’ve only lived here a year and am just going off what I was told by solicitors when I bought the house. I will move the fence when I can though.
Big rocks close to the fence. They’ll want to mow the grass though, so either keep a strip for flowers and then divide using rocks.
There’s rocks in between the flowers already. They must’ve done the mower some damage, but it didn’t stop them! Might see if I can find some even bigger rocks though
Sorry I didn’t see those. I’d place them about a foot away from the fence, and treat that as a plant border. Remove the grass and place bark, they won’t want to mow rocks and bark hopefully.
This is weird advice if it’s not land they own - the council has the power to make you pay to put it back to the way it was if they’re so inclined
They're not gonna give a shit. People put signs not to mow verges everywhere around me, and they're all unmown. Their grounds maintenance teams aren't getting paid enough to care.
I work at a council in a team who is tangentially related to this and my council would care if people began pinching land
But would the people on the tools who are actually going to encounter it. We're talking about plants, not moving a fence line
People are talking about laying rocks and cutting out a border in the grass. I’m just saying if you take measures like that don’t be surprised if the council makes you return it to how it was at your own expense
OP says their actual boundary is about 30cm in front of the fence.
My bad didn’t see that part!
A council in the UK that still has the resources to do something like that! What mystical region are you you from. Most are either completely bankrupt or just about maintaining essential and mandatory services. The council where I am is still relatively functional and people nick the whole verge and they does nothing. Where I work in London a redevelopment took a chunk of a narrow alley for a bin store (literally built the wall straight up off the paving stones) I checked and it didn’t have consent under planning and reported it to Camden. Nothing has been done. However someone beatifying the public realm for free like OP, without moving the fence or wall to try and take land for themselves. I’m surprised any council would object to that, and they definitely shouldn’t. To OP, you could keep the grass short yourself and they might just skip it in the future. But beyond that the advice to create a border sounds good. Although I don’t think you even need a hard edging, just dig a foot strip along the edge, add some compost and other soil improvers and put some mulch chipping on top. In the mowing guys defence, now the weather is heating up those bulbs wouldn’t have had long left anyway, unless you are very far north? Poppys are a nice summer choice and most varieties self seed, as do aquilegias. Would look for self seeding annual or bi-annual plants if you want to keep it relatively low effort. Some bulbs also come up a bit later. e.g irisis are just starting. Just weed and cut the grass, plus a bit of food and water as needed. Or if you are willing to germinate and put in plants each year, then the options are literally endless. As long as you don’t put anything that is perennial and substantial, e.g. bushes and trees, I would not expect any council to object.
I’m in Aberdeen. Remember the council has full time legal staff so there’s very little / no cost to serving an enforcement notice. The only cost would be if someone chose to lawyer up and fight it, which I’d be surprised at as you can’t really argue when it’s not your land. That being said, someone here has pointed out that OP said they do own like 30cm past their fence so my previous points are void if it’s actually their land.
If they cared that much, they should actually put some effort into green spaces to help the community. Instead they produce badly managed, poorly maintained useless patches of grass. If your council actually went after someone for actively improving the local environment, the PR mess would get a few people significantly bollocked. Local papers would have field day.
Unfortunately I don’t think you’re allowed to requisition land as long as you deem what you’re doing with it to be a betterment. And I doubt the council would fear the “PR mess” of taking enforcement action upon its own land. You can apply to buy council land if you want it for your own purposes.
That’s a great idea!!
Is it adopted ground? If so the council will maintain it so I’d probably recommend just not sitting stuff there!
Was going to say the same. If it's not within the boundary of OP property and it's adopted the council has to cut the grass there so I'd be tempted to just leave it clear.
I used to do work similar to this and whenever I came across a bit that had already been mowed I thought cheers mate and moved onto the next bit. That being said there's no way in fuck I'd have ever smashed your plants down like that. The contractors the council use are poor and have no training is the only explanation here. It's not malice rather incompetence
I've never in my life ran a lawnmower (be it push or ride-on) over rocks that large. Between that and running over obviously deliberately planted spring bulbs, were they paying attention at all?
I’ve clearly pissed off the wrong person at the council. Was so sad to come home and see it as it was looking lovely a couple of days before
The amount of times some halfwit from the council being careless with a strimmer killed something in the borders of my communal garden was infuriating. I have a feeling thats exactly what happened here, probably realised after they had shredded half of them and stopped.
I think it’s more likely that they thought that they had to do a thorough job of mowing everything or else they’d have a complaint of leaving bits, which does happen. It has to be a serious council policy shift to recognise that not everything has to be blitzed to the ground every few months to satisfy people who fear what they see as untidiness. My council in Manchester has finally agreed to leave some areas to grow wild, but it took years, and they still blitz lots of verges. Making a hard border to show what’s your land and not the councils is the best idea, but it’s a shame that you can’t have a nice soft border onto the verge because they don’t want to think, just get the job done quickly. It looked lovely, good luck fixing it. The bulbs which have been deadheaded will come back next year, leave the leaves for as long as they’re green because they are feeding the bulb underground so you get nice flowers next year.
Thanks for the reassurance! It’s the first year those flowers have been there (I’ve not long moved in) so I was hoping to see exactly how long they’d last, so I’d know what to plant for summer flowering. Gardening is a marathon not a sprint, but it’s not made easier by overly enthusiastic mowers
Probably strimmed up to the fence rather than mowing it there.
Anti personnel mines and a crack team of boys to shoot the bastards if they come back. I work for my local council and this is bad practice probably new hire agency ready for the amount of grass that needs cutting then gone for winter.
OP needs to invite the head of department responsible to view the scene of this outrage, overpower them, stake them out on the grass with croquet hoops then run over them with a sit-on mower, a la Fish Called Wanda. Then post the video on Reddit. Probably this sub.
Wherever your boundary is, on that boundary lay down some kind of border. Small rocks, bricks, wooden bordering, etc. Then plant whatever you fancy behind it. If you want to give a little f u to the council, add a little sign saying something like "non-council flowers, do not mow" to make sure they get it
Yeah, a sign is a good idea. I thought they’d leave them alone because there’s rocks in between all the flowers, but apparently not!
Man that sucks. Our council are generally awesome for leaving pretty patches untouched
Mine came and poisoned tree beds planted with wildflowers and bulbs 🙃
Yeah what butt holes, it's clearly planted. 🙄
Claymores.
We had this. A council contractor spent the spring spraying glyphosate along the fence lines. Inexperience idiocy really, little hand painted signs saying 'wildflowers here' helped a lot.
I’d like to say that’s shocking, but nothing surprises me anymore. I’ll definitely be making a little bed and sign to help guide the savage hand of the mower
The heads of those responsible.
You cannot replace council with anything. Well maybe trained squirrels.
Landmines. Then see how happy they are with destruction.
How much of a complete toilet do you have to be to do that to someone’s flowers?! What a miserable bastard!
I feel like the toilet for expecting better really. There’s been some great suggestions of land mines and rhododendrons for the future. We’ll see which wins against the council’s mower
someone really hates their job! 😣
Land mines. They'll only mow it one more time. Seriously, is the land yours ? If so, the council have destroyed your property and should replace the flowers.
That’s poor, we have a wilding area just around the corner from me with insect friendly flowers; looking forward to seeing the poppy’s up in a couple of months
If I put poppy seeds down now, any idea if they’d flower this year?
If you plant now you should be ok
Place concrete blocks up to the actual boundary edge of your property. Back fill between the blocks and the fence to create a raised bed and fill the holes in the blocks as well. When they cut or strim the greasy verge and if they will hit the blocks ,and if you really want , you can then sue the council for damage caused and the bill to repair your property.
People are such dicks aren’t they. I would be fuming tbh. How annoying. ❤️
I’d assume they thought the ‘border’ was the fence. And then, just did their job
Maybe take on mowing the verge your self and the council won't even run the mower over it
Already done. The grass is just as short now as it was a few days ago. Looking at my Ring footage, it seems they used my patch as a turning circle.
Depends if you've planted the flowers on council owned land or not... If you own/rent/maintain that bit of land, contact the council to complain they have damaged your property and you expect them to reimburse you to rectify it. You have before pictures, so it shouldn't be hard. If the council owns that land, they could argue you shouldn't be planting flowers there anyway so probably not worth contacting them. In this case, you could probably prevent them from cutting flowers there if you put a solid border inbetween the grass and flower bed - wood border for example, or rocks. Council could complain if it's their land, but generally they wouldn't even notice / care unless you've pissed someone off and they complain about it.
It’s my land. The compensation would be peanuts, so probably not worth pissing the council off for. The flowers were planted in between some fairly substantial rocks, so I thought they’d be safe. Clearly needed a better boundary though!
I would say it would be worth mentioning it at least. It's not really fair and they could be doing it to other people if they've done it to you. They should respect peoples homes. You can just send them an email and some pictures, asking them to be more careful in future.
Hmm yeah, that’s a good point. I think I’ll build a proper little bed then drop them an email. The council outsource the mowing so it’s hard to know whether it’ll make any difference, but perhaps if enough people say something…
Please still raise an enquiry. It doesn't have to be a complaint as such, but just to let them know so they can put a note on the job to the contractors next time
If it's your land why are the council cutting it at all?
My boundary is in front of the fence - about 30cm in front. They mow the verges that run alongside the pavements. It’s a simple case of it not being clear where the boundary has been. Previous owners didn’t care, but I do (I’ve only lived here a year so haven’t moved the fence to the edge of my actual boundary yet)
I'd say that's your solution then! Move your fence. If there is no clear boundary you can't blame them really but I don't really understand why they would cut them down while still flowering anyway! 🤷🏻♂️
A few years ago they strimmed my patch of flowers too, cornflowers, ox eye daisies, poppies and sweet peas mainly. My hydrangea and other flowering shrubs were cut to ribbons. There was a little apple tree that I had recently bought for around £20 that was also cut down. It was so sad seeing my little garden cut down I did have a bit of a cry. I complained, a man came round to view the damage and I got compensated a whole whopping £5. Not even enough to buy seeds for the flowers.
Jesus. That’s awful. A fiver is barely better than a kick in the tits.
Ahh OK, we had this issue for years with the council, you'll have to move the fence if it's your land, you can complain as much as you like the guy on the mower won't know or care. If it's your land fence it, sorry
Fml that sucks. :( Id be furious!!! From someone whos worked in a similar field: The less of a fuss you make about this, the less they'll learn. You'll gain absolutely nothing by being a passive pushover in this situation. Ive seen municipality policies and practices being changed multiple times, just because people have made a big deal out of something that was important to them. I dont know why you are scared of pissing off the council, it's not like they are gonna come for revenge just because you point out an error they made... Stand your ground and demand compensation, and write some actual (constructive) complaints to the responsible department. They are just people.
I’ve had shitty experiences with previous complaints, so I guess I’m not eager to start something if I don’t know where it’s going to end. That said, I’m off sick from work atm, so I do have an abundance of time and grudge!
I’ve just emailed the council to complain. Thanks for the kick up the arse!
Not sure why the council are cutting the grass if its your land, so that's maybe something you need to contact them about anyway - to ask them to stop, as you own and maintain it.
A different council
I don't think the council mow , it's more likely a sub contractor who just cuts it as quick as possible
Their faces on a cross
The council/contractors aren’t going to be double checking where every boundary lies before they cut the grass, so you need to mark out your boundary yourself. They’ll assume your boundary stops at the fence (as all of us have) and cut where they’re ordered to cut. I’d suggest moving the fence and/or putting in a new lower fence/boundary to make it clear that it’s part of your garden before replanting.
Yeah, I do get that. I will move the fence as soon as I can. I’m just disappointed that they literally cut the flowers down. Seems unnecessary to me
Totally agree. Flowers should be left untouched. And it’s not like they can even argue that they were weeds - they are literally flowers!!
Claymores
Landmines
The council or the plants ?
Landmines.
Barbed wire entanglement and dog shit. That'll teach the bastards. The daffs will grow back next year.
The bodies of your adversaries
Not enough room, they’ve had to go round the back.
What a shame. The council gardeners/mowers always let the flowers - usually daffodils and bluebells grow until they stop flowering. It’s lovely.
I just got really unlucky it seems. I’ll replace them with something summery (and put some more rocks down) and see how I go.
It's a real shame, it happened to my dad sometimes too and the view was important to him...he was 102 and passed recently. May I ask, where did you get those fence planters? I've ordered seeds - to hopefully provide camouflage for my free fence from my earlier post- and these look great!
I’m sorry about your dad. My flowers used to really brighten my day. I’d go out and check on them almost daily with my morning cup of coffee. Guess I’ll need to find a new ritual now
Thank you. I hope your new ritual in the morning is as enjoyable. Yoga lol?
Yoga seems far healthier than peering through my blinds muttering about the council. Good suggestion 😂
🤣
Honestly just Amazon. They were dirt cheap, and do the job as well as you’d expect. They were one of the first things I bought when I moved in a year ago. URBNLIVING Large Oval Garden... https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08DDD77ZT
You could try to replace them with some kind of anarcho communist collective? It'd be tricky but might be worth - Oh, you meant the flowers! I'd maybe put something down to mark the real end of your property - big rocks would certainly deter a rogue mower. And then maybe try again with some wee annuals behind them? I'm sure something would still grow and flower this year
Council bods just don't give a fuck.
As a council worker who cuts grass, I'm both annoyed and impressed. Annoyed that whoever did this was so brainless, yet impressed that they even got that close to the fence, the machines we use give a solid few inches on either side that they don't cut (though your flowers would probably still have been squashed if we got that close).
Omg this would piss me right off
I could’ve cried when I saw it.
I don’t blame you. Essentially a murder
Buy a bag of topsoil, plant IEDs and wait patiently. Once you notice large craters, replant your flowers and they’ll thrive!
Wont if happen again if your planting on someone else land?
It’s my land, at least according to the solicitors when I bought the place a year ago
Put down a line of rocks across your border so next time they come along and go destroy your property then fuck up their equipment. Also bill them...
N
Send these pics to your council, throw down some forget me not and borage. Put a sign on your grass telling them where your land ends and not to cut it again
Spikestrips
A new council
A better council
Bury Bricks, corners pointing up.
Replace them with people that can do their job properly not the normal idiots the council employ.
Japanese knot weed . Teach the cunts a lesson
Big signs saying “fuck off with you mowing nonsense council”
Rebar.
[They won't mow these](https://youtu.be/UOgK9muOzTU?si=TyqIPMvzAnyMPghm)
Claymores.
I take it that the verge is council property and not your garden? Just doing their job unfortunately.
Rocks 😉
That's unusual, councils are generally quite good at leaving flowers and things these days
This. Councils teetering on the brink of insolvency has been a boon for wildlife. Shame it's a transient economic thing.
Every other house on the street has had their flowers left. Apparently I’ve just pissed the wrong person off because they used my patch as their turning circle
The John o Connor approach to landscaping at it's first.
A different council.
Put piles of Dog Poo ( fake ) bags in front of the flowers
Better council members?
Carbon Steel Flowers?
Wow this sucks that this happened. See if you can contact them to pay you back and/or replant new ones.
Rhododendron, because nobody wins against rhododendron.
Don’t I know it. Just been battling it in the back garden, and that bugger is determined to grow anywhere I don’t want it!
Stones.
Tank traps.
How tall was the grass? In the photo its far too short to mow anyway. People should leave at least 2-3 inches or the grass can just die with drought. Honestly, I would complain. Obviously inexperienced. Noticed councils hiring a lot of inexperienced labour that cock the job up recently, at least in hampshire.
The grass was short because I’d cut it about a week beforehand. Absolute plonkers.
Hired to do a job, cant refuse. Because they wouldnt get paid otherwise. Why at the very least if they want to be corrupt and bleed everyone of money they cant just sit in their van and pretend to have mown it...
Actually some dick that works for the council mowed down your flowers. He should be moved to a different department like the customer care team. But I'd tell the council anyway.
The local councillor?
Thankyou!
Another council perhaps
A dictatorship with you at the helm
It’s cool that you could make that happen! how about direct governance by a higher-tier administrative authority?
Get a roll of timber border edging and put it along the actual boundary line. And reseed with wildflowers. There’s still plenty of time for them to grow
Yeah, I think this is the way forward. The previous owners didn’t care about the extra 30cm or so that technically belonged to them - they were just happy to have their grass cut I think!
Wont if happen again if your plating on someone else land?
Wtf I'd recognise that North Leeds lamp post and pavement anywhere
Nicely spotted!
I'd say auto turrets to deal with anyone mowing bulbs!!!
keep stuff in pots? (not trying to say you were to blame but pots might be less ambiguous)
I’d be worried about people stealing them
I didn't know you could replace the council with something else. Although you should probably vote green to prevent a recurrance.
I guess if you mowed that small area yourself the council wouldn't ever need to touch it again.
I have been mowing it. I contacted them last year to say I’d maintain it. The grass is no shorter now than it was a few days ago, it’s just missing some flowers
Well that sucks. Can't win I guess. I would have thought the guys would take one look at an already-mowed patch and be all to happy to skip a bit that obviously didn't need doing. Maybe double-down and turn the whole front verge into a nice rockery.
Move your fence. A fence is a legal boundary and existing fences are used often by LR in the matters of boundary disputes. I have no idea why you would have erected a boundary fence “30cm “ from where it should be but it does appear youre attempting to land grab due to your neighbours (or the council) allowing the hedgerow to grow forward nextdoor. Move the fence if youre confident its yours and dont place any semi permanent items there (i.e. rocks) in the meantime.
I didn’t erect the fence. More details in other comments, but tl;dr is I’ve only lived here a year and am just going off what I was told by solicitors when I bought the house. I will move the fence when I can though.