Bedford Borough Council has admitted that its maintenance team made a mistake while tidying up planters in the Black Tom area of the town, and that they shouldn’t have been strimmed.
As reported last week, community gardeners were left heartbroken after heavy-handed council workers were spotted strimming the area’s planters.
Read: Black Tom community gardeners heartbroken as street planters “strimmed to mud”
Workers cut back street planters on Stanley Street, Clarendon Street, Beaconsfield Street, Salisbury Street, and Palmerston Street with strimmers, clearing away flowers, shrubs, and bushes cultivated by local volunteers.
While some escaped relatively unscathed, others were ‘razed to the ground’, despite housing healthy and thriving plants, regularly tended by locals.
A spokesperson for the council said: “We have been made aware of this after a complaint was received by the Council; the area was strimmed and our staff carrying out this work made a mistake in the method of shrub maintenance used.
“We apologise to anyone whose plants were unnecessarily damaged or destroyed.
“Bedford Borough Council will replant shrub areas where necessary and allow regrowth where feasible.”
