Sir, – Aaron Cassidy’s solution to noisy garden equipment is simple yet workable (July 22nd). Neighbourhoods could perhaps organise summer Five-a-Scythe competitions. Agreed rules on making the cut would apply. An alcohol ban would be essential to avoid a risk of some participants becoming footless. – Yours, etc,
PATRICK JUDGE,
Dún Laoghaire,
Co Dublin.
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Sir, – I was brought up, and still live, in an area where there are trees, hedges, and grass verges, and where everyone has quite large front and back gardens. We are also near a golfcourse. I have been accustomed, all my life, to the sound of tractors from the golf course, and of lawnmowers from neighbouring gardens. But it is a good number of years now since I registered the abominable noise emitted by hedge and shrub trimmers and blowers, as well as strimmers, where formerly shears, secateurs, rakes and sweeping brushes were the implements used in garden upkeep. These instruments are all petrol-driven. My husband uses some electric aids to gardening, and they are much less noisy. Where I live, everyone used to do their own gardens – as a few of us still do – but most of our neighbours, through disinclination to garden or through age, have firms which invariably use machines for all their work.
This new noise pollution is not being addressed, and as we count our way through the various days of the week marking off which neighbours are getting their gardens done, we do so wish that someone would take it more seriously. – Yours, etc,
NR JESSOP,
Dublin 14.