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So upset

Guernsey Donkey2Guernsey Donkey2 Posts: 6,713
in Plants
I have spent the last few months trying to encourage more wild flowers to grow in our garden.  I thought I was doing well until I found my husband with a pair of long handled shears cutting all the flowering pink campanile, foxgloves and teazel down along our dividing fence this morning.  He says we should keep the fence clear - I had a bit of an angry attack,  he went off in a sulk - how would you feel/react if this happened in your garden?
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  • B3B3 Posts: 26,965
    I'd find a better use for the shears!
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • Guernsey Donkey2Guernsey Donkey2 Posts: 6,713
    Yes, I can think of one - best not to air it though! Why are some people (mostly men) so hell bent on destruction.  We have diggers going in front of our property building 8 houses and another at the back taking down a hedge, another neighbour at the side has removed all the undergrowth under his trees, thus disturbing nesting birds and insects, my husband knows how annoying I find all this destruction and then goes and joins the band!
  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 29,829
    Righteously angry.   Get him to take you for some horticultural retail therapy by way of apology.  They tend - eventually - to learn to be more careful when they know how much it's cost.
    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
  • Hampshire_HogHampshire_Hog Posts: 1,089
    GD had you not ever told him this was what you were doing?

    Maybe I'm not like other men but I hate seeing the needless destruction of our natural habitats, two of the things you describe could actually be illegal at this time of year the removal of the hedge and undergrowth from below the trees if birds were indeed nesting then it is against the law to disturb them.

    A country boy at heart born and bread.

    As Obelixx says a good dose of retail therapy at his expense would go a little way to make amends.

    "You don't stop gardening because you get old, you get old because you stop gardening." - The Hampshire Hog
  • cornellycornelly Posts: 970


    We both decide what to do in the garden, so know exactly what is happening, both love wild flowers as well as cultivated varieties, just returned from a stroll round the local nature reserve, Hawthorn flower (May) looking glorious.
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 86,876
    My dear son once decided to ‘help’ when I was out ... when I got back he proudly showed me the pile of ‘dead potato plants’ he’d pulled up (newly planted fruit bushes) and the area he’d ‘dug over for me and pulled all the weed roots out’ (the new asparagus bed)...... I blamed his father who had been left in charge while I went to an exhibition PV. 😉 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • TheveggardenerTheveggardener Posts: 1,057
    Retail therapy BIG time, he wont do it again. 
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 86,876
    Obelixx said:
    Righteously angry.   Get him to take you for some horticultural retail therapy by way of apology.  They tend - eventually - to learn to be more careful when they know how much it's cost.
    👍. Grrrrrrr!!!

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 29,829
    In theory, OH and I make decisions together.  In practice, I tell him what I'd like to have happen and then he goes off and does the labouring side after his fashion which usually needs corrective surgery.  last summer we bought, together, some globe artichoke plants.  i planted them, we watched them grow.  He asked if we could harvest baby artichokes to eat and I said no, we'll remove them and encourage the plants to grow big and have more next year.  OK.

    What did he do in autumn?  He "weeded" the artichokes.

    This spring he has bought replacements and now understand that they are perennials.

    In our Harrow garden he once proudly weeded an entire row of "weeds".  They were Florence fennel.  He does now understand that most weeds don't grow in neat, evenly spaced rows.
    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing." - George Bernard Shaw
  • debs64debs64 Posts: 5,039
    My hubby pruned our red robin there is literally one stem left! I had said remove one third maximum as we were clearing the area. He likes things to look tidy!!! 
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