The following is the text of an email I have sent today to Ward Councillors here in sunny Aldborough Hatch, on the edge of the green belt of Fairlop Plain, where sparrows play in my front garden and a robin haunts the rear garden
Yes, it is me again. You must get fed up with hearing from me in emails!
This is the third time I have reported an untidy garden on the Redbridge Council website. I did so this afternoon. The address is (I will not make this public). Unfortunately I am only permitted to send one photograph. Each time I have been told in a reply email that action has been taken - but the rubbish remains. The green bin near the front door is filled with materials for recycling - but has not been cleared by the refuse collectors as it is not near the front gate. I fear that the smell will begin to be rancid - it is fortunate that my sense of smell is not very good at my age.
I will not bother you with the fact that after today’s refuse collection, paper and bits of rubbish litter the pavement and roadway hereabouts. I trust that there will soon be a high wind to blow it all down towards the Town Hall. I might go out with my litter picker, bag it and dump it on the Town Hall steps - but I am a little tired after doing the weekly shop and I also have more bulbs to plant.
I live next door to the house in question. The second photograph shows part of my front garden. I have started to prepare this for the winter and the spring. I am able to work for about two hours at a time and then have to take a rest, so it will take a few more days before this is finished. There is much cutting back still to do, but you will see that I have planted out some pots with spring bulbs. More to follow. The third shot is inside my front porch.
It is one of the few cultivated gardens around here for the Road has become a giant car park. When the flowers are in bloom in the spring and summer, passers-by stop to enjoy the sight. As many front gardens are paved over I guess my front garden will soon become a museum piece (a little like me!) and visitor attraction, with people travelling from far and wide to see the flowers!
The house is let. The owner lives in (area secret). It is pointless sending letters as the renters probably do not even read them. They are pleasant enough and speak with me - I have no problem with those who rent and live there. I shared my home-grown tomatoes with them in the summer and they enjoyed them. But it is not their house so they do not care about the front garden. The weeds from the garden run through to my garden and are a constant source of problems. I assume the owner must be registered as this is a house of multiple occupation.
The owner came in the summer to clear the rear garden. He even pruned an apple tree in fruit - which shows how much he knows about gardening! He devastated some fine climbing roses! The weeds in the rear garden run into my garden - and I am having to have a new fence as the weeds ran up the trellis and the wind brought this down last winter. The fence will be installed next spring.
Can anything be done about people who put their dustbins in their front gardens, leave the lids off the top and place rubbish around them so that the foxes and cats pull the bags open?
What do I have to do to get this rubbish cleared? Do it myself? Perhaps if I carried it out and put in the roadway something would be done about it. If it not cleared by the end of this month, I will ask my youngest son when he is home from Norway to help me carry it into the middle of the road. Or shall I send the photographs to the ILFORD RECORDER to show up both the owner and the Council?
Can something please be done about this?
