Express, by Alex Evans: BBC gardening legend Alan Titchmarsh has urged gardeners across the UK not to mow the lawn on a Sunday.
Alan, 75, rose to fame as a star of BBC garden show Ground Force alongside down-to-earth pin-up Charlie Dimmock and co-star Tommy Walsh. Alan, who can still be seen on ITV’s Love Your Garden, has issued a plea to gardeners not to mow their lawn on a Sunday morning, or use any power tools at all in fact. Setting aside the fact that gardeners should not be mowing lawns in May at all, Alan has in the past hit out at “mowers, blowers and strimmers” in a piece in BBC Gardeners’ World magazine.
He said at the time: “It’s clear to me the rarest thing in any garden is silence. It appears to be the one commodity money can’t buy.
“I was worried I would sound holier-than-thou when I explained that I never use power tools on a Sunday.
“I believe profoundly there should be at least one day in the week when we could go out into our gardens and experience a bit of peace and quiet.”
Alan went on to argue that more and more people are taking an interest in the sounds of nature such as birdsong and the sound of the trees shaking in the wind, and that a noisy Black & Decker ruins it, even the modern electric tools.
Technically, laws on power tools are limited to construction work, but building sites are not allowed to use power tools on Sundays. Construction is limited to Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm and Saturdays, 8am to 1pm, so Alan has a point, albeit a lawnmower isn’t quite as loud as a jackhammer.
Many local councils also state that DIY noise at home should only be carried out between Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm, and to undertake DIY outside these hours may well constitute antisocial behaviour.
Prophetic Link:
“Then you can tell them, but not in such a manner as to attract attention to your work. You need not cut short your work by yourself laboring on Sunday. It would be better to take that day to instruct others in regard to the love of Jesus and true conversion.” The Southern Work, page 69.4.