Father in fierce battle against ‘tsunami’ of snails in his garden | UK News

A father battles a ‘tsunami’ of slugs in his £10,000 garden every night, while his wife begs him to come back inside.

Mike Dinnebier has had to take drastic measures to protect the tropical paradise he has spent thousands of dollars on in his backyard in Hethersett, Norfolk.

After his wife and one-year-old daughter have gone to bed, he sneaks out to his garden at midnight with a headlamp and a bucket to pick snails from his plants by hand.

The 33-year-old said he initially tried digging holes behind his sheds to attract hedgehogs and frogs into his garden and eat the pests, but they ‘couldn’t keep up’.

Because there are so many slimy creatures, he has had to take matters into his own hands. He now acts as a guardian of the plants, with nightly visits at 8pm and midnight.

Mike said he doesn’t want to put out slug pellets because if hedgehogs eat the slugs that have eaten the pellets, they will also get sick.

Mike said: ‘This year it was so wet in the spring and a very wet start to the winter that the slugs were really bothered by the snails.

‘There have been so many snails this year that they (the plants) just took over and the hedgehogs and frogs couldn’t keep up. They usually keep them under control, I’ve never seen a snail in the three years before.

‘Whenever I saw new growth this spring, it was always eaten by the slugs, so this year I’ve had to physically remove them. I just pick them off the plants, put them in a bucket and throw them away.’

Mike has to get up at 5am every morning to go to work, but most nights he doesn’t go outside until midnight, when the critters are most active.

He said: ‘They are still getting a bit of a grip on it, a lot of the plants have lots of gnawing holes, but the damage is limited so it is definitely worth a try.’

The most expensive plants in Mike’s garden are three tree ferns that he bought during COVID for £600 and imported from New Zealand.

He said it can take about a hundred years for them to reach two metres in height and the same tree ferns now sell for about £700 each.

Mike also spent a few months trying to get hold of a blue tinted bamboo plant which cost him £100.

The father of one makes a living making Formula 1 car parts. After work, he picks up his daughter Nora from daycare and looks after her until his wife Jasmine, 30, is done with work.

Mike said Nora loves looking at plants in the garden. She is particularly fascinated by his 33 species of Venus flytraps. Jasmine, however, does not always feel the same way.

Mike said: ‘I get complained about because I spend too much time in the garden. She says ‘you need to come inside and spend more time with me’.

‘She likes the end result, and so do I. I like the end result, the gardening itself is a bit of a chore, but the end result is worth it. She keeps at it because it’s worth it.’

Mike currently spends 15-20 hours a week gardening. Although he has been working in his garden since 2019, he has plans in the future to build a patio where he can plant even more plants.

Mike and Jasmine moved to their home in Hethersett, Norfolk, in 2019 for its two-acre garden, which gave their three Shih Tzu dogs, Alfie, Brody and Cooper, more space to run around.

He said that when they moved here the garden was covered in brambles and nettles and they had used a mini excavator to clear the garden so they could start again from scratch.

Shortly after moving here, his parents gave him a banana plant as a birthday present. This sparked Mike’s passion for plants and prompted him to order more.

This involved growing new plants from start to finish by taking cuttings from plants already in his garden.

In the winter, Mike would even dig up some of his plants and put them in his greenhouse, which he heated to about 20 degrees to ensure they would survive the temperatures.

He also organizes open gardens, which he promotes on his Facebook page, called Hethersett’s Hidden Tropical Garden, where he sells and exchanges plants with people in his area.

Mike said: ‘I spent every day from sunrise to sunset here doing something in the garden. It just kept getting bigger and bigger and before you knew it there were thousands of plants in the garden and they were all taking up most of the garden.

‘There’s not much grass. Of course I’m here every day and it gets a bit boring sometimes.

‘You can be out here all day weeding and you look at it and it’s like it’s no different than it looked this morning and I’ve just been out here for eight hours. I’m just getting tired now and I don’t see any change.

‘But if everyone says: this is really good, then that gives you hope and appreciation again.’

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