For 15 years, nobody was bothered by the gravel bed in front of Matthias Bleifuss’s house in Diepholz, Lower Saxony. Now he has to remove the stones, otherwise he faces a fine of 50,000 euros.
At the corner of Hauffstrasse and Heinestrasse in Vechta, Lower Saxony, it looks as if a gravel works had set up a branch there: White, light gray and anthracite-colored gravel areas cover the areas in front of the single-family houses, which do not deserve to be called front gardens. The few evergreen coniferous trees do not change that, on whose thin trunks and branches there are spherical branch structures that resemble the pompoms of cheerleaders. Only one plot of land on the street deviates from this scheme: there, bare lavender plants and other perennials still stretch up in winter.