judith lea wrote:

a.c. wrote:
Perhaps a bit tongue in cheek, but has anyone ever thought about a
national health service type thing for gardens?
What got me thinking about it is our 15-20m high Birch, a mere 4 or 5m
from our neighbour. At present, it's shedding twigs. Though no branch
extends over the neighbors, at such a height some twigs do blow in.
They've never as much as commented, but I was wondering what if they
did, because we would have to fit the bill for any tree work to be
done, whilst they and all our other neighbours benefit from the tree...
free of charge!

A.C. I'm not quite sure what you are asking here!

The tongue in cheek bit (compliments to Sacha and Rupert) being that
the NHS, being well stretched, could do without having to provide a
full gardening service to individuals so as to impact an environmental
compliment to benefit individuals through such a national programme,
rather then solely treating/curing individual's illness to attain a
national level of health.

Imagine an alternate world were the values of gardens compares with
ownership of cars. or bricks'n'mortar properties, i.e. where the
commercial value of having a garden competes favourably with the
advantages of transforming the garden into a car parking space, or an
extension to the main building.
Where the value of gardens recognises the essence of variety thereby
off-setting the monotony of the type of globalisation as written about
in last month's RHS The Garden magazine.
You could claim garden expenses against your taxes, or the state would
carry out the work for you. You could even be paid a sort of
over-the-top rent for having and maintaining your own garden, whilst
maintaining full autonomy over it. . Wouldn't that be nice (-:
It would mean being in a world were such garden value has being
asserted. In this world, most realise that a garden is worth more than
the sum of its parts, but little is known about just what that extra
sum amounts to.


Of course it might not be all so Rosy. If the national garden service
does the work for you, you might have to wait ages for a simple grass
trim. You might have to settle for the local firm who are notoriously
staffed by incompetents and thieves, though can become remarkably more
interested if you go private with them. Or even a competent firm may
have strangled resources meaning they simply can't operate because
they're in an unlucky post code.
But the advantage of dreaming about alternate dimensions is you can
paint it as problem free as you wish.

As your neighbour
has not complained over a few twigs, why are you worrying about
possible tree surgery!!

As I said, "but I was wondering what if they did,"

I get branches, twigs etc blowing/falling
into my garden, and leaves from the hundreds of trees around here,

In the above alternate world, were those leaves and twigs from my
garden, I might be able to find a ruse (legal loophole) through which
you'd have to pay me for that wonderful material, in the same way as
copy-right is sometimes awarded along geographical lines. Or, I'd be
allowed to retrive it albeit at my own expense, which I could then put
against my taxes off course.


it
doesn't worry me, it's all very natural and at least it's not a man
made nuisance - just think how lucky you are, you have a nice neighbour.

Ah, yes, but what if I hadn't?