Gardening

This page will tell you how to maintain your garden and how we maintain communal gardens.

Maintaining your garden

If you have a garden with your home, you are responsible for maintaining it and keeping it tidy.

This includes regular lawn mowing, trimming hedges and bushes and making sure that weeds, plants and bushes don't grow into neighbouring gardens or on to pathways.

You must also keep your garden free from waste and litter and clear up after your pets if you have them.

It is a condition of your tenancy that you maintain your garden. The responsibility to maintain your garden is the same whether you:

• Have direct access to a garden from your home (such as if you live in a house or ground floor flat) or
• Live in a flat or maisonette and have been given sole use of a garden area within the grounds of your block.

If you don't look after your garden

We can take action against you if you don't look after your garden. This can include clearing your garden and removing or pruning trees and then charging you for the works, or serving you with a litter clearance notice.

If you don't comply with a clearance notice we can give you a fixed penalty notice of £80.

Suitable plants

You should make sure that any shrubs or plants you grow are suitable for the size of your garden and will not overgrow into neighbouring areas.

This is particularly important for trees or tall shrubs which you should not plant if they will grow to be a nuisance for your neighbours.

Getting help with your garden

We can help if you cannot maintain your garden due to your age, an illness or mobility, or because you have a disability – if you don't have anyone else living with you who can maintain the garden.

We can give you one-off help with a particular activity or we can visit you regularly to do tasks such as grass cutting and pruning.

If you would like help with your garden, you should contact your housing compliance officer.

Communal gardens

We are responsible for maintaining communal gardens. This includes:

• A regular cycle of grass cutting
• Hedge cutting
• Maintaining shrub beds and trees
• Weed spraying hard surface areas.