Carry on gardening

An elderly woman who voluntarily weeds a village flower bed has been banned for health and safety reasons - unless she wears a high-visibility jacket and erects road safety signs.Green-fingered June Turnbull, 79, has been ordered to display "men at work" signs, have a lookout with her and wear a fluorescent safety jacket if she wants to carry on.

Mrs Turnbull, who spends a few hours a week tending the flowers when the weather is fine, said the demands were "madness". She said: "This is health and safety gone mad. It is red tape bureaucracy. They can send me to jail if they like - I just want to be left alone to do it. It is a very pretty flower bed. I have tried to make it look very natural.''

The situation arose when a highways inspector from Wiltshire County Council was visiting the village of Urchfont, near Devizes, Wiltshire, and spotted Mrs Turnbull gardening. The inspector asked the parish council chairman Peter Newell, who was accompanying him, if the council had a section 96 safety licence to do the work.

Mr Newell said he had no idea a licence was required but - to his shock - was told that work must stop immediately if they couldn't comply. According to the inspector, the parish has the same health and safety responsibilities for volunteers on county-owned land, such as the flower bed, as for its own staff. The jacket was required for visibility and the signs and lookout because the patch is on a corner, he said.

It includes checking that the soil on the tiny patch of land is clear of wires and electrical cables. Mrs Turnbull has been registered as disabled since she contracted polio while pregnant with her first child.

She first began work on the patch of ground eight years ago. She pays for the plants from her weekly pension and cycles the half-mile to the flower bed from her house whenever she can.

Over the years, she turned it into a beautiful roadside shrubbery, planted with the evergreen euonymous, or 'spindle' plant, and nepeta, also called catnip.

Her labours helped Urchfont win the title of Best Kept Village in Wiltshire two years ago.

When the inspector mentioned the requirements to Mr Newell and Mrs Turnbull, she vowed to carry on regardless.