Council to keep a close eye on roundabout taken over by gnomes – despite having no gnome policy
A couple in Long Eaton filled a roundabout with rescued garden gnomes. Now there's a petition to call it Gnome-man's land, and the council says it will 'continue to monitor'.
Most roundabouts in Britain are decorated with a bit of grass, a sponsored sign and, if you’re lucky, a lone traffic cone. The one next to Long Eaton railway station in Derbyshire has gnomes. Lots of gnomes.
They were put there by a local couple, who spoke to the BBC anonymously as Mr and Mrs Gnome. During a summer clear-out they found a load of “tatty” gnomes in a garden shed and simply couldn’t bring themselves to throw them away. So onto the roundabout they went.
AI illustration.
“We thought we’d just put them on the island and it absolutely snowballed,” said Mr Gnome. People started donating gnomes, which Mrs Gnome repaints “brand new”. One woman from out of town offered them 200. They politely declined, to avoid overloading it. The gnomes already there have been weighed down for safety.
AI illustration.
There’s now a petition to rename the roundabout “Gnome-man’s land”.
And the council? Derbyshire County Council leader Alan Graves said it was “making a lot of local people smile”, before adding the sentence of the year: “While we don’t have a specific policy on gnomes, it needs to meet the normal safety, planning and maintenance requirements… which we will continue to monitor.”
The gnomes, we assume, are monitoring right back.
Reported by BBC News.
