Abig, green fight against the dull pull of mediocrity

Something there is that doesn’t love a hedge. This one is on the Kapiti Coast, where neighbours have primed the local council to chop it back – when it would look hideous – or chop it down and join the dull mediocrity that makes so many people happy.

It is a giant macrocarpa hedge, and I have always admired it. Further off, in the posher part of Waikanae, they have camellias and rhododendrons and iceberg roses by the mile, but at the sandy end there is the hedge that after 80 years needs to come down. In case. Just in case. I greatly admire Vince Osborne and his family, who have over many years created a thick, undulating wall of greenery that is a landmark on the coast; that and the three crosses that rise up outside someone else’s place.

The wooden crosses don’t have to go, though goodness knows someone will soon argue that they offend Muslims, and I’m glad, because they remind me of Louisiana, where there’s a little church every few miles, and fat cops sprawl with their legs up on porch rails, gun at the ready.

In case. In case has a lot to answer for.

The hedge is about 70 metres long and as wide as a bus. After 80 years you would be.

Its owners have tended it beautifully, so that it is a continuous, soft, deep green, and now the – some – neighbours want it gone. In case someone, possibly a child, gets hit by a car because the hedge projects over a hypothetical footpath.

There will always be neighbours. You’re lucky if you get good ones.

If death or injury could have been blamed on the hedge already you may be sure it would have been destroyed. But the fact that it hasn’t happened suggests that people look where they’re going, and drivers can see people out of their car windows.

I don’t believe I amalone in admiring the hedge. It is a visual high point of the drive around the less posh part of Waikanae, a reminder of the old-fashioned gardens in our small towns.

There was just such a hedge at the end of my street when I was a child. It had a nice smell when you squashed its leaves, and you could convince yourself that you could hide inside it and no-one would ever find you.

That hedge, and house, were bowled for a new road. At least it wasn’t neighbours nagging that caused its demise.

Certain kinds of neighbours are to be politely avoided. Neighbours who fuss over a boundary fence and bore you with tape measures.

Neighbours who do renovations that deprive you of privacy. Neighbours who don’t like your trees and want them chopped down.

Neighbours who have no appreciation of gardens and think everything that grows is a weed that needs to be poisoned.

Neighbours like the people who bought an old house near my grandmother’s and promptly chopped down the huge apricot tree that was the bountifully yielding wonder of us all.

Something there is that doesn’t like anything taller than itself, and this hedge is tall. I have a relative who only has to see a tree before he gets out a chainsaw in his mind and dreams of flattening it.

Is it a phallic thing? Is it just that some have nothing better to do than imagine imminent tragedies?

The protest by the Osborne family and their supporters that stopped the chainsaws last week is one I would have gladly joined. This is a case where the council needs to think again.

Apparently the hedge is implicated in the cause of three vehicle accidents since 2000, but if I were the Osbornes I would like the opportunity to cross-examine whoever makes the claim.

Three accidents, none of which hurt anyone, in 80 years doesn’t sound evil to me.

Local mayor K. Gurunathan says he doesn’t want blood on his hands in case.

Definitely in case. I say widen the footpath if you’re that worried. Or examine all the houses in the street for potential hazards, such as small children who might run out a gate on to the road, or cats that sunbathe in the road, or dogs that poo on other people’s lawns, or party places that play The Nine Inch Nails at 3am.

The footpath was wide enough to accommodate a line of parked cars put there to block council workers getting set to attack the hedge last week, and a newspaper photograph showed traffic driving by, on the hedge side of the white line, without any difficulty.

The width of a car is plenty wide enough to walk on safely, so what’s the problem?

It is only a hedge. You’d think it was an idiot with a machine gun.