We live on a new housing estate. It is the first time we have lived in a modern house. We were fed up with the continual maintenance of an older property. To be honest we could no longer afford to keep it in the manner it had become accustomed or indeed deserved. One of the reasons we chose to buy a house on this particular estate was the green areas; old boundary hedges full of sloe and hawthorn had been retained, wooded areas with scrub and wildness and new planting of trees and beds of mixed shrubs. All too good to be true? Naturally.
Today I met with a local councillor to discuss the dire maintenance and rabid incompetence of the so-called landscapers. I have been finding it difficult to sit back and watch the arboricide. Trees have been strimmed to death and if the machines don’t get them then the inept staking and strangling ties will. Abandoned planting schemes are overgrown with weeds and dying from indifference. A bank of knotweed has been carefully trimmed into a hedge. It breaks my heart.
She listened to my concerns. She is up against a developer who is only interested in profit and greenwashing their activities. I am not hopeful my efforts will come to much, but I tried.
This little wallflower*, self-seeded between kerb and road, is also trying very hard. Possibly with more success than me.
* Nemesia of course 🤭 Thanks Noelle x
Off The Edge Gardening 
Good luck with your endeavors, I hope something changes for the better. People are so awful about greenwashing! I love that term. What goes here appalls me.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I believe it is everywhere. Money, it seems, can buy anything.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Except caring.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Exactly ❤️
LikeLiked by 1 person
And rampant cluelessness. Did I make up a word?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sometimes you have to make up a word to fit the purpose. 😊
LikeLike
Good luck with your efforts – the strimming trees and hedges to withing an inch of their lives (and usually during the bird nesting period) is maddening.
LikeLike
I sympathize with you concerning the maintenance of the communal areas – fortunately our new house was in a cul-de-sac of just 4 (since expanded to 5) and the owners all muck in to keep it looking good (one in particular is a real keen gardener). However, all of the surrounding new-build estates suffer from the same neglect/mistreatment as you describe, and that after paying extortionate management fees.
LikeLiked by 1 person
And they keep getting away with it. One day perhaps, if we shout loud enough, they will buck up their ideas.
LikeLike
Always the same I am afraid, but you could engage in a little gardening of the areas closer to you and get fellow residents interested. I love that little plant possibly a nemesia seed jettisoned from a nearby plant? How about bidding for the contract to maintain the areas, and collect together a well trained by you gang of workers?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Nemesia, of course! What was I thinking. Corrected now and a blessing to you x
LikeLike
It’s a fact of life these days. Councils have their work cut out trying to enforce the “big things” in the planning consents. They do learn what went wrong and try to avoid repeat mistakes next time but “the rules” regularly get in the way.
Trouble is that these developer problems are often compounded by the purchasers and the current propensity to sow bags of concrete seeds in place of plant ones, replace turf with plastic and remove any greenery that requires maintenance. Round here, we’ve got a lot of public planting that’s maintained by the public but as the oldies can no longer do, the youngies aren’t coming forward to take their place.
LikeLike
KEEP AT IT GIRL!
LikeLiked by 2 people
😘
LikeLike
Hang in there! Every voice helps 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
It is heartbreaking when those perfect on paper landscape schemes are not maintained and worse when the horticultural knowledge is woefully absent. Your voice is a start. I hope you can gather more local support. Two or three voices will make a difference. Good luck.
LikeLiked by 1 person