Hedge today ... gone tomorrow
Judo expert Anne Carruthers was to do battle with Renfrew District Council ... no holds barred.
She wanted them on the mat for digging up her private hedge without asking her permission, we reported in June 1985.
Housewife Anne, 35, of Glenburn, returned home to find her fourfoot hedge had been torn out by council workmen.
“I was really disoriented,” she said.
“I thought I’d come to the wrong house.”
The workmen were in the midst of putting a fence in place at the time — until Anne stopped them.
Anne then demanded the council replant the hedge and if it dies, replace it with another.
She was quite willing to let them put up the fence as well. But the hedge had to stay.
“I was fuming,” said Anne, a mother of two boys.
I’d gone out and when I returned home three hours later my hedge was away and there were these workmen in the front garden.
“They were about to take the hedge away to dump it, but I told them it stays.”
She was particularly annoyed that the district council didn’t tell her they were fencing her part of Glenburn and want to remove all high hedges.
Anne admitted she was not much of a gardener,
“But it was a living thing and I did look after it.
“It’s been here longer than I have and that’s 13 years.”
A council spokesman said tenants are informed if their gardens are to be fenced.
“But there must have been a slip-up, which is why this lady wasn’t told,” said Ron Spinks, the council’s buildings and works controller.
He added: “We can’t put the hedging back. It’ll die any way.”