I’ve held off posting about this, cause it made me so frustrated…..
When we bought our house there was approx 20ft of mature daylilies growing on our side of the road side ditch. A question to the seller confirmed that although the town mowed the ditch here they didn’t care about our side of it, even though legally they could.
Over the last couple years I’ve been adding to that line of daylilies. That area is a pain to keep trimmed and the mature lilies do an awesome job at keeping down the weeds on the ditch-side. Resulting in about 40ft of daylilies on my side of the roadside ditch.
A week ago, last Monday, I came home from work to discover that the town had been through and mowed the ditch. Which was fine and normal. Except that this time they’d also used an extended arm mower to mow the first 2-3feet on my side of the ditch.

To say I was peeved would be putting it mildly. But I took a deep breath and reminded myself that they have the legal right to do it.
Tuesday morning I called up the town’s Highway Dept Supervisor to ask if they were supposed to be mowing on my side of the ditch? The answer is apparently no! They’re only supposed to be mowing on that side of the ditch if its a visibility problem, such as at an intersection. So I advised the supervisor of what had happened, and that in addition to taking down my daylilies they’d also taken the cap off of the water shut-off. He promised to have a word with the mower driver, and that the town would be out to replace the cap on the shut-off. Though they haven’t been out yet and I may need to call him again.
On my way to work that Tuesday I paid extra attention to the roadside of the rest of the road. I’m hoping the supervisor got a few more phone calls. There are daylilies missing in several places along the property owners’ side of the ditch. And in one case, one homeowner had planted daylilies to edge his driveway and the first 3 feet of daylilies along both sides of the driveway are now stubs. I’m thinking that someone doesn’t know what daylilies are……
The good news is that, at least on my property, the mower was mostly a couple inches above the dirt level, and so there’s a couple inches stub of at least some of the daylily plants, and so all of those plants should survive the experience. However there are several places where the mower clearly hit dirt. Plus I can’t find stubs for many of the newer plantings (he even mowed down the metal stakes I was using the mark them!), so I’m not sure how they’ll do. Regardless though they likely won’t come back as full as they were, as it takes time for that sort of growth to appear.
A week later and the whole strip like still looks murdered and dead. Though I’m sure the weeds will be shortly taking advantage *sigh*……..