French Life-expat France

Imagine a lovely English style garden border, about 60 metres long and 4 metres wide. It is full to overflowing with trees, shrubs, rose and bulbs, and there is usually something in flower for nine months of the year. It takes Mrs B a lot of work to maintain it, but it runs up the side of our entrance and is often the eye-catching talk of the neighbourhood.

Now imagine SAUR water telling us they needed to run new water pipes that would pass through our property, for about 500 metres along our border with the road. Mostly this is in meadow and fields but for about 100 metres it runs through the garden, including crossing the flower border above. We had to sign a form giving permission, so checked very carefully that damage would be kept to a minimum.

A narrow trench, for a thin flexible pipe, they promised, with more or less no disruption or harm to the garden.

On further questioning, they changed from a trench ‘dug by hand’ to a trench ‘dug using a mini-digger’, but promised the border would remain unharmed, because they could carefully remove the plants, dig the trench from either side of the border, refill it and replant the plants. Grudgingly Mrs B agreed, mostly because there wasn’t much choice and they seemd like caring genuine kind of people. They wanted to pass through our land because it saved them a great deal of extra work (and money) involved in following the road.

Move forward six months to this week, when the work started. As the workers moved up the field Mrs B questioned them again ‘Are you sure you can avoid damage?’ Every question, as in the past, was met with assurances, smiles and comments about ‘no need to worry’.

So it was something of a surprise on Friday to amble down the drive (we can’t see it from our windows) and find a large bulldozer actually driving around on the flower border. Surprise for me anyway. More like a traumatising shock for Mrs B, who got hopping mad, went blue, got hysterical, and so on.

The pipes weren’t small, or flexible. The digger wasn’t small. The plants won’t survive, and pretty much they had said whatever they thought we wanted to hear, rather than the truth which was ‘we are going to drive a four metre wide strip of devastation through your garden’.

One bit of good news though. I had been intending to clear the brambles along part of the border, which would have taken quite a bit of time. In fact the water authority ’scorched earth’ policy with a bulldozer has worked a treat, and will save me a day or two of snipping, strimming and chopping.

Edit: a second bit of good news. Full credit to SAUR water - when Mrs B sent an email complaining they were here within 24 hours, telling us to list what plants we needed and asking when we wanted their gardener to come and sort things out. A surprising and very impressive response!