Landscaper turns potholes into flowerbeds to draw attention to 'state of Sussex roads'

  • WATCH: The man behind 'Pretty Potholes' has gone viral for his work filling potholes with colourful flowers across West Sussex

A landscaper from Horsham has gone viral for planting flowers into potholes across roads where he lives.

22-year-old Harry Smith-Haggett has filled in around 40 potholes around where he lives in Horsham with soil and plants.

Harry said: “One Saturday night I was driving home and I noticed one of the roads had a big pothole. I thought, it’s late, I’ve got some plants from a job...so I just put some plants in there and the next Monday it was tarmacked over.

"I don’t know if it’s a coincidence, but it’s good enough for me.”

When he decided to film himself filling the potholes with soil and plants and post it on TikTok, he was overwhelmed with the response. In a few weeks he's hit more than 2.5million views.

“I was just annoyed with keep hitting potholes and I thought what could I do without causing further damage and also might make some people smile.

"I thought why not just make them pretty! I just thought I’m going to plant plants all over West Sussex and it’s taken off from there.”

The council has urged people not to try and self-fix potholes on the roads for safety reasons.

Harry has put around 40 different plants in various potholes across Sussex

West Sussex County Council told ITV News Meridian “West Sussex County Council understands the public’s frustration when it comes to the potholes and the need for repairs and we take the maintenance and repair of roads in the county seriously, increasing our resources to tackle potholes and improve road conditions. "The council has committed an additional £4million to support highway maintenance activities, enabling us to undertake proactive repairs, and have also invested an additional £7million of capital funding, increasing our resurfacing and treatments programme to more than £20million. A further £10million will be committed for 2025/26. "We have 25 highway officers identifying safety defects, both through routine inspections and by responding to customer reports, and 20 repair teams dealing with safety defects. In more rural areas, we are also using three Velocity road patchers to help tackle the volume of safety defects on the network. “If people would like to report potholes, they can do so online : https://www.westsussex.gov.uk/roads-and-travel/report-a-pothole-online/, so that we can send an inspector to visit the site and organise the repair as quickly as possible.”

As the authority says it's increasing resources to fix potholes, for now Harry says he's pleased to be spreading a bit of joy.

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