A KEEN gardener has blamed an over zealous council groundsman for the death of many of his prize blooms.

Tommy Sharpe, 75, of Queens Road, North Weald, said his flowers were growing nicely in time for the spring when they suddenly died off a few days after a council worker had begun spraying weeds near his property.

He said: “There was a guy with a tank on his back with a spray. He was spraying the base of the wall outside my property. What’s happened is the spray has drifted over the wall. They have killed off the blue lobelias on the wall and the phoenix palm- that’s completely dead, and my winter cyclamen have been killed.

“We had lovely blue flowers, a couple of days later they’re all shrivelled.”

Mr Sharpe was so annoyed with the incident he asked the district council to send out an officer to investigate.

But he was particularly angry at the man’s response.

“He came along and said it was the cold winter,” said Mr Sharpe. “He said he didn’t agree with me. What does that make me- a liar?

“If you look around North Weald they’re flowering all over the place, but they’re not flowering here- they’re all shrivelled up. It was there one week then it’s gone.

“I said ‘is this an exercise in futility?’ He said ‘yes because I’ll be writing the report and they’ll believe me’. I’m really stressed out by it.”

A spokesman for the District Council said: "We did undertake some weed-spraying on council land separated from Mr Sharpe's garden by a high brick wall.

"Whenever we do such work we take a number of precautions and we don't think our spraying was responsible in this instance.

"The herbicide we use is made specifically for the public highway and open spaces. The way in which we apply it is designed to use the minimum amount necessary to control unwanted weed growth and also to prevent 'spray-drift'. Employees undergo special training and need to complete an examination before they are allowed to carry out this kind of work."