A grandmother is defying an order to trim back the bushes in her front garden after her local council ruled that they were a health and safety hazard. Nevertheless, Becky Curtis regularly gets admiring comments from neighbours and passers-by who are impressed by the shrubs outside her grade two listed home in Dedham, Essex.
There’s been plenty of rainfall in recent weeks that has seen the greenery grow and as a result, the plants have spilt over the 84-year-old’s 30-inch high wall and onto the pavement.
Becky Curtis, who was born in her 18th-century home, insists there’s still a three-foot gap which allows people to use the path without a problem, but Dedham parish council disagrees and has ruled that Becky’s balotta, acanthus and choisya are a possible danger and need to be trimmed back.
In a letter, the parish council clerk said various complaints had been received about foliage creeping onto the pavement.
It read: ‘Please can you cut back the overhanging vegetation so as not to obstruct the pavement for pedestrians. Thank you for your co-operation with this.’
But Becky, who’s a long-standing member of the Dedham Horticultural Society, is resisting the demand with the support of numerous villagers.
She worries that any large-scale pruning will rob bumble bees of her two oversized balotta flowers when they flower later this summer.
Becky said she always cuts the balotta back as hard as she can every Autumn and doesn’t see why she should act any differently this year.
She said that we must do what we can to help the bees.
She said that she was completely taken aback when she received the letter saying the council had received complaints, although they didn’t say how many complaints there were and that she guessed it might only have been one person.
She said that she spoke to a lady from the council, and she told her that she had to comply as it was a health and safety issue.
Saying that they don’t say that when someone stumbles up on one of their paving slabs and breaks their neck because it wasn’t fixed when it should have been.
Becky said she’d been told someone with two children, a pushchair and a dog might find it difficult to pass the bushes but said the more she thought about trimming them back, the less she wanted to do it.
Bees will adjust and find alternative sources, although there is a lack of vegetation now and if we’re not careful bees will become extinct because now more than ever bees are endangered, and because bees are endangered, nature, ecosystems, and our food supply are also at risk.
But bees are not endangered because of pruning back bushes, they’re endangered because bushes and tree life are taken away altogether, which in this case it’s not, and the bees wouldn’t be affected by a little pruning.
What about those people that are disabled and use mobility scooters and wheelchairs? If bushes and plants are overgrowing and in the way they get hit in the face by hedges, and then sometimes they have to go in the road because they can’t get past, but I’m sure if someone on a scooter was hit by a car, she might think differently about the consequences.
I personally wouldn’t have all that greenery in front of my home, but each to their own. I just think that when it’s all pruned back it looks nice, but when it starts to overgrow it begins looking a mess, but I must admit, it looked like there was plenty of room for people, prams and wheelchairs to get past.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 