The Spring Festival may have taken oven The Square, but the streets around Petersfield town centre weren’t just alive with the sound of music over the Bank Holiday Weekend.

There was plenty of scraping, too, as a small army of volunteers grabbed their hoes, trowels and wheelbarrows to give the pavements around Petersfield Infant School a good weeding.

The Bank Holiday Monday push was part of the Great British Hoe-Down with residents being encouraged to weed pavements and frontages with manual and old school methods.

That’s because Hampshire County Council will begin a programme of pavement spraying next Monday and Tuesday (June 3 and 4) with concerns being raised about the potential toxicity of the weedkiller Glyphosate on the public and animals.

And if there’s no weeds to spray, then there’s no need for chemicals, with HCC agreeing to miss roads which have been cleaned or adorned with ‘no spraying here’ messages written in chalk.

The scheme has caught the attention of people around Hampshire and beyond as the BBC filmed the Bank Holiday Morning clean-up around St Peter’s Road and Hylton Road for South Today.

But the push also highlighted the importance of traditional weeding methods as Petersfield youngsters Bonnie and Barney Greaves found a slowworm – a protected species – hiding in the weeds on Hylton Road.

“I think it’s a great idea, trying to stop all these pesticides from being used because there’s so children and pets around here, and it just makes sense to protect them” said their mother, Charis.

“Hampshire County council have co-operated on this and have let us know when and where they’re spraying,” said concerned resident, Julie Yardley.

“They have assured us that if an area has been cleared of weds then they won’t spray, and they’re also looking at options to reduce spraying.”