The damage to the lawn was obvious. Photo / Supplied
The "lawn police" paid a late-night visit to a North Shore home to vandalise the garden with a message: mow your lawns.
A resident of Telstar Place in Beach Haven discovered yesterday that her lawn had been attacked in the night with the vandal gouging the word MOW into the grass and adding arrows to indicate where the grass was longer.
She told the Herald she couldn't believe that someone had gone to the effort of going on to her property to carve the blunt message into her lawn.
Describing the vandal as the "lawn police", the disgruntled resident said: "It's not nice, no one should do that. They should come and talk to us".
She has been living for two years at the property, with her partner and elderly father. She said that it was a quiet street and she never had any issue with other neighbours.
She told the Herald that the vandalism was the last thing she needed, with seven weeks to go before her first child was due.
"It's really annoying, to be honest."
She said her partner worked long hours and while she had been working from home since our first lockdown, they didn't have a lot of time for work outside the home, though she insisted they mowed their lawns every 4-6 weeks and the grass never got out of control.
She noted that whenever her partner was home, she had a long list of jobs for him to do.
She told the Herald that she first noticed when she took her elderly dog for a walk in the middle of the night.
She hadn't seen the markings when she was last outside in the daylight, so assumes that the "lawn police" waited until dark to make their feelings clear.
She shared on social media that she was disappointed because her family had taken the time to be neighbourly since they arrived in the street, introducing themselves to the neighbours and pitching in to help pick up rubbish when bins were toppled by strong winds.
Since she shared the photos on social media, she said that other residents of Telstar Place had been in touch with their tales of run-in with the "lawn police".
One resident shared on Facebook that she received an anonymous typed note in her letterbox admonishing her on the upkeep of her lawn.
"It made me want to grow a meadow on my lawn, so I did for awhile," she wrote.
Another said they too had been targeted, with their lawn marked a month ago.
The resident hit by the latest attack said she had a message for anyone wanted to police their neighbour's lawns: "It's not your concern."
She said that neighbours should be able to discuss any concerns they had directly and taking covert action like this was "too much".