Overgrown? Sorry sir, that’s just biodiversity
OAP’s shock as grass left wild at family grave
MOST gardeners have at some time or another come-up with an inventive excuse to get out of mowing the lawn.
But one council may just have topped the list of feeble apologies for not cutting the grass by claiming it let a cemetery grow wild to ‘enhance biodiversity’.
Stanley McColl, 93, was shocked to see the 2ft-high grass covering the graves of his grandfather, grandmother and two aunts.
Dundee City Council said it was a deliberate low maintenance programme to help wildlife thrive and keep the memorials stable in Western Cemetery.
But Mr McColl’s son-in-law Malcolm MacBain, said: ‘Why can’t the council just be honest and say they simply don’t have money to cut it?’
Mr McColl, a veteran of the D-Day landings, said the areas between the graves had been left uncut and apparently neglected, and gravestones overgrown by bushes and shrubs.
Mr MacBain has called on the local authority to take action to tidy up the area.
He said: ‘I went along to have a look after my father-in-law told me about how bad a state the place had been left in.
‘The grass has grown over some of the headstones and in some places it was even coming up to my belt buckle.
‘It seems very disrespectful when we know there are First World War graves among the grass.’
A Dundee City Council spokesman said: ‘We agreed at the start of the grass-cutting season to reduce the amount of grass cutting we would carry out in the Western to enhance the biodiversity and memorial stabilisation.
‘There are two sections we are trialling this year but we are still cutting the areas next to the paths and roadside edges.’