How sad to read Phineas Harper’s article about council tenants being denied the pleasure of cultivating a small garden on the plots of land outside their properties (The council has come for our gnomes and pot plants. Your hanging basket might be next, 23 May).
When my mother and I moved into a new council flat in Manor Park in east London in the 1960s (now part of Newham), the large piece of land between our flat and the Eastern Region railway viaduct was divided into small garden plots, each with individual clothes lines. Most tenants took full advantage of these plots, taking great pleasure in cultivating them in their own individual ways.
Likewise, when my mother moved up to Peterborough to live in a block of low-rise council flats designed for older people, she was again able to make a garden at both the back and front of her flat. Surely local authorities should be encouraging tenants to make the most of their space rather than banning them.
If the Covid pandemic has taught us anything, it is how important it is for our mental health to be able to get outside into the fresh air.
Marie Paterson
Nuneaton, Warwickshire
• Phineas Harper’s article makes a number of excellent points on the benefits to people of being able to use outside spaces, even small ones. I suggest that to these we should add wildlife and environmental benefits.
While people with grass areas are being encouraged to have a “no-mow May” to help butterflies, moths and bees find flowers to collect from, a parallel clampdown by paranoid local authorities on window boxes and hanging baskets on fire safety grounds would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.
Lyn Pigney
Alaigne, France
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