OTD - Obsessive Tidiness Disorders

What is it with our society in the UK that makes most of it so unbearably obsessive about tidiness? I mean don’t get me wrong there are times and places where it is the done thing, such as the uniform rings on a Wembley turf or topiary in Blenheim Palace or even just uin general as i hate as much as anyone litter or fly-tipping. But in the main do we really need to be so obsessive about things that really don’t matter such as cutting the grass verges so often or so short, flailing hedgerows maintaining a fenceline in a straight and orderly fashion with no 'weeds'?

Neat, tidy, square, straight and completely wildlife unfriendly

Many of these form my annual gripes with LA's and private landownerss. All demonstrate various facets of tidiness in society that have impacts on the natural environment that far outweigh actual real cost benefits of these actions.

We have a beautiful park opposite my house, the former garden of an old manor house long since gone; it is surrounded on most sides by a lovely old stone wall which in some parts forms a road boundary with a sloping grass verge, in days gone by it was rich in wild flowers and having the sun most of the day great for butterflies. However, once upon a time somebody said they were weeds and untidy and now each year a nice little man from the council comes out with his back pack of herbicide and proceeds to kill everything that is growing along the base of the wall, not only does he spray there he sprays everywhere, around the bases of the big trees, the signs that say don’t damage the trees, along the base of the post and rail livestock fence when the beasts are in the field (two sick cows this year I am told will be ok), around the bins all around the benches in fact anywhere that looks like it needs spraying with herbicide. the areas that can be reached by a strimmers are then shawn close to the ground so not even a dandylion grows

Agent Orange strikes again

The end result is a very visually unpleasing strip or patch of dead brown vegetation followed by bare dead earth for the remainder of the year. The main reason for this they say is, ‘they can’t get the lawn mowers up close to such structures’ nor is it safe to strim on a bank, we've had complaints about the weeds and we need to make everything neat and tidy.

Why, I ask myself is it so important that they have to resort to poisons when in such places where particularly in the spring is an abundance of spring flowers and associated insects and why, in this particular location, do they have to cut the grass so frequently and so close to these structures, it is not as if it is is Blenheim Palace after all its Herrington bloody park for god's sake.


This leads me to the other and more serious consequence of these operations; after years of poisoning the verges and base of the wall nothing grows along it now, which because of its fine soil mix, has led to a massive amounts of erosion and inevitably the instability in the wall.


Queue the inevitable council overreaction of closing half the road off whilst they stabilised the wall. Will the penny finally drop as to the reasons and solutions to this conundrum? We will have to wait and see if the little man from the council comes out with his back pack next year, I will not hold my breath.

Just as I thought I had got over this rant on my tidy neightbours I had to witness another episode last week too and that really got my blood boiling.

This year has been a good year so far for migrant birds such as martins and despite the dry conditions everyone has moaned on about (I for one have not). They have been busy building nests on some of the local houses as always, all of which bar one have been happy with their African visitors. They provide endless hours of enjoyment twittering to each other on the telephone lines and aerobatic displays in the park dispatching thousands of pesky flies to boot, so most people see them as a good addition.

However, one has not been so fortunate and its attempts at nesting were always ending in disaster because the house owner kept poking the nests down. His reason they were ‘making a mess’ and “they were not neat and tidy nesters like the blackbirds” what absolute cacbabble a total croc of shite.

Well Im afraid that was a criminal act so he was formally warned by the police for interfering with nesting birds. It is an all to common event, if not always a deliberate act, as we keep our gardens and leylandii hedges ‘neat and tidy’. Ignorance is no defence in this case, I personally would have prosecuted him as it is such a selfish act and so small minded and as i say far to common an event.

House martin nests - leave them alone

Wildlife has enough hardships without these many unnecessary acts just for the sake of a bit ‘neat and tidiness’.