ABINGDON Town Council is removing plants and flowers from graves as part of its new maintenance programme.

One resident was left angered and upset after his parents’ grave was stripped bare by town council gardeners.

Raymond Stimpson, 62, of Pudsey Close, has been planting flowers and shrubs on and around the grave in Spring Gardens cemetery for 21 years.

On his last visit, however, he found the flowers and shrubs had been uprooted.

The council said the grave was within the ‘lawn section’ of the cemetery, where only a memorial headstone and one flower container was allowed at each of the 400 graves.

Steve Rich, the council’s project and technical manager, said people had not been abiding by the council’s rules and regulations, and had introduced personal effects to, and around, individual grave spaces, including alcohol, sweets, toys and money.

He said: “It was decided that the regulations would be enforced after a period of notification to those who use the cemetery.

“Unfortunately, the action taken by the maintenance staff, whilst being correct, was before the period of notification which the council has decided to undertake.

“For this the town council apologises to the family for the distress that may have been caused.”

Mr Stimpson, whose father Dennis died in 1988, and mother Nellie died in 1993, said he could not believe it when he approached the groundsman to ask where his flowers were.

He said: “The rose bush that been there for ten years had been cut back to just a stump, the five-year-old dwarf conifer that had grown no higher than a foot had been removed.

“The groundsman was not very sympathetic at all and told me there was no point in planting anything else.”

The town council is responsible for two cemeteries in Abingdon.

It said regulations would be applied to both.

Mr Rich said copies of cemetery rules and regulations were given to families before funerals.

He said: “In the case in question, the family chose to have the departed buried in the lawn section and, by doing this, undertook that no planting of shrubs or flowers would be undertaken. This allows for the maintenance of the area to be undertaken more regularly.”

Mr Stimpson, who has three children and one grandchild, said that in the whole time he had visited the grave, he had never been told not to plant flowers or shrubs.

He said: “I was upset and angry.

“I can’t afford to put a headstone on their grave, so I plant flowers and small shrubs to make it look nice.”

Raymond Johnson, 38, of Kennington, who visits the grave of a friend who died two years ago, told The Herald: “I thought this man pulling up plants was vandalising the graves.

“He saw me looking at him and came over to tell me he worked for the council and had been told to do it.

“He was not at all remorseful and carried on yanking the flowers out.”