LIONEL Pepper may look like a man who's ready to chop down a few trees as he stands on a grass verge near his West Wellow home with an axe in his hands.

But no! He's the man who planted a tree for the benefit of his community and was told to dig it up and take it away.

Wedding and engagement ring maker Lionel Pepper thought he was doing his bit for his area when he moved a healthy eight feet tall oak sapling out of his garden and put it on a grassy 30 feet wide area of verge.

But within a couple of weeks, he received a letter from Wellow Parish Council asking him to take it away again.

"With regret," the letter said, "the council must ask you to remove the tree for a number of reasons. The site is a highway verge and permission is needed from the highway authority to carry out any planting or other works.

"The verge is also a 'licensed site' which transfers the responsibility for grass cutting to the parish council. The presence of a tree is awkward in the context of regular mowing. In any event, an oak tree is likely to bed too large for this site in many years to come."

Lionel, a former member of the parish council, promptly took the tree out and re-planted it in his garden, but not without letting the council know he was a touch disappointed with it.

He wrote back: "It is a sad fact that Wellow is rapidly losing its most beautiful trees, of which there are now many standing examples of dead and dying oak trees on neglected land to the south of the A36 and elsewhere in the village, not to mention those destroyed by fire and wanton building.

"Nothing is being done by the parish council to replant the village with England's heritage trees. I took great care to select an appropriate place to replant the tree, well back from the road on a bare, unattractive verge, once part of this property and only festooned with various examples of ironmongery."

He then proceeded to ask if the parish wanted him "to follow the example of George Washington" and also remove the two flowering cherry trees which he bought and planted on the opposite verge 27 years ago, with no council reaction.

As a parting shot, he suggested that the council should consider re-naming Plantation Road in the Canada part of the parish, where there is no longer a plantation as the trees there were sold off years ago. He was also careful to date his letter "Saint George's Day, 2006" rather than settling for April 23, 2006.

"I thought 'Why not?' St George's Day, England, the oak tree, dandelions. It all fitted," he said. And that axe? Does he really intend to use it?

"No. When I get stewed up about something, the best way of dealing with it is laughing it off and this is my way of laughing it off," he said.