I HAVE been thinking about writing to you about the wonderful display of native plants that have been growing along Wirral verges this spring and feel I must now respond to the complaints from Tory councillors who appear to be complaining that this is a “mess” cannot understand why they do not appreciate nature’s display.

I travel along Willaston Road regularly and every spring enjoy the display of spring flowers along the grass verges and am annoyed and saddened when some vandal (presumably the council) comes along and shaves away all the vegetation until only sadly shorn grass and other dying vegetation even bare ground remains.

This spring first there were snowdrops, then a glorious display of a “host of golden dandelions (not that different from daffodils)” followed by magnificent umbellifers.

Many meadow flowers are in serious decline as a result of human’s mania for making places tidy and our bees are in serious trouble.

Luxurious grass verges provide an excellent habitat for bees and other mini-beasts, to say nothing about a food source for hedgerow-nesting birds. There are many important services on which our council should be spending its scarce resources so they should leave the grass verges.

Our poets recognised the value of the natural environment. Wordsworth eulogised about a “host of golden daffodils” And Robbie Burns lamented that “the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley’ when he accidentally destroyed the nest of a “wee sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie (harvest mouse) when harvesting his corn.

Why can’t the Tories have a similar respect for the natural environment?

Audrey Moore,

Wallasey.