Inconsiderate neighbour / Hedges

As above we have a neighbour that we sometimes get on well with, but the guy in particular is quite selfish.

He’s fallen out with the neighbour on the other side of him (about hedges I believe) and I get the impression they didn’t get on with the previous owners of our house either. The street with live in has open plan front gardens and we have a small strip of grass between our 2 drives. It starts about a foot wide near the houses and reduces down to a fine point when it gets to the pavement. He owns that land as our drive goes to the border.

He’s now decided to plant laurels in that strip – not sure what type but English laurels seem the smallest and can get to like 11 feet wide and 20-30ft tall.

My wife was talking to him and his wife today and suggested it was a bit big to plant there and would grow over our drive making it difficult to get in and out our side gate. Their answer was we’d have to keep our side of it cut back. Ffs!

It looks like in law there’s nothing we can do unless it gets really tall, then if it blocks light or access the council can force them to cut it back / down, but not remove it.

Has anyone had this before / got any ideas? We particularly don’t want to spend our entire life trimming something we don’t even want or having the roots lift the drive up.

2am spray of herbicide.
Job jobbed.
😜

A foot isn’t wide. We’ve had laurels for 25 years, and we just keep them well trimmed to around 4 foot high. It will take them a few years to get established, but you just need to keep on top of the trimming – I do ours about 3 times a year – I do cut the neighbours side too as I have the tools

Build a solid fence first.

The hedge won’t grow through to your side and it’ll make sure all the growth is narrowing his driveway.

I like the fence idea in a passive aggressive sort of way. But I think walls and fences aren’t allowed on the estate for front gardens – detailed in the deeds. At least walls are anyway – I’ll check and see if fences are mentioned. A nice 6ft fence panel with a 6” gravel board and concrete posts (which he hates!) would get the message over.

I wouldn’t worry about it. Laurel are slow growing, only need cutting once a year when established and you are within rights to cut anything that goes over your side and as it is such a narrow strip they will never do that well if you cut them back every year whilst they are small.

Hone your topiary skills while it thickens up, then you can relief-carve a suitably pithy comment into it.

Its a free hedge, don’t let him get the satisfaction of winding you up! Just trim it so it never gets bigger than a 2ft box hedge!

Comment on how much you love the idea and they’ll probably uproot it just to try and wind you up even more!

Be a bit careless when using “pathclear” on the drive ……..

The latter sounds tempting.

Laurel isn’t slow growing as above though – it can grow aggressively with certain species growing 5ft in height in a year apparently. Eek.

Once planted I may have to try and change the angle of the plants subtlety so they grow over his drive. He commented he wouldn’t want a small wall between the two drives as he wouldn’t be able to get out his car properly. So the laural bushes baffle me a bit.

I hope he gets regularly soaked getting out the car so it gets on his nerves.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1f/7a/18/1f7a1886ba17e6dbf9c8bbff99fdbf2a.jpg

Get creative.

long game

Train the tree to grow towards his side (leave the top leaf in  any cut face his side, it should grow that way)

short game

Salt, lots of salt

I have enough Sodium Chlorate that you could kill everything in that strip and leave it barren for a year. PayPal gift after an offer?

The night after they go in, ring-bark them all with a small, sharp knife?

Give the guy a chance he hasn’t even planted anything yet !
It’s his land he can plant whatever he likes within reason – perhaps pampas grass would have been better for you 🤗
You’re worrying about something that hasn’t happened yet…

Tbh you sound like the moaning neighbour!

This is the place to start.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hedge-height-and-light-loss

We had the opposite issue with a neighbor aggressively cutting back our hedge and citing this kind of law, the crux is it needs to be evergreen, which a laurel is.

If your driveway gets intruded upon at the pointy end of the grass you have every right to cut back, which will effectively kill it, and make it look very ugly.

Don’t forget it’s his hedge so belongs to him. Anything you cut from it must be given back to him / chucked into his garden.

I reckon in a little while you’ll be glad of the barrier.Look forward to seeing you on channel5! Ha.
Let him get wet & keep it cut on your side. & what Qwerty says.

I fully intend to throw the cuttings back his way as we have to pay for a green bin in our area for garden waste….after all he still owns them 🙂

Unfit geezer – bear in mind he’s already fallen out with the neighbour on the other side and the previous owner of our house so I don’t think it’s me being difficult. Planting a laural in a foot wide strip of soil that immediately borders our drive is pretty anti-social.

He had pampas grass in there previously that grew into a massive block of hate. When he decided he wanted him out it took him ages and ages to do it. Serves him right!

Thanks for suggestions – I may see if I can pre-empt the growing of huge stuff with making it difficult for anything to take root in the soil. If that doesn’t work it’s getting aggressively cut back and pruned to try and aim it in his direction!

Fill it full of spiders so every time he gets out of his car he disturbs them. I’ve never understood front gardens that have no kind of barrier. What’s the point? It just ends with angry old people yelling when you accidentally walk across their garden when you’re pissed. Build a wall old man!

The no wall front garden thing does look nice but I get what you’re saying. Next door man hates spiders and we all seem to have some really big evil ones that actually crunch if you bash them. I find it hilarious he’s built these horrible little shed things as lean-tos on both sides of his house (where he’s built as close as he can to the boundary) but they’re riddled with spiders. He got bitten by one a couple of summers ago! Horrible big things they are – never had them anywhere else we’ve lived.

Spiders it is then 😀

He had pampas grass in there previously

Maybe he’s upset that you didn’t take advantage of his friendly invitation?

If the deeds prohibit walls and fences they may well have some stipulations about hedges as well, or perhaps that no obstructions can be added at all.

For the cuttings IIRC you have to offer them back to him but he does not have to accept them.

Let’s hope you are not on clay soils, and if you are your foundations are deep enough if it comes close to the house…

Some councils stipulate height of hedges, distance from road side to driveway under visual splay on safety grounds, its why most new build estates have no walls or hedges between gardens.

Soil is ‘top soiley’For the first 8 inches then goes into fairly heavy clay. If he’s putting them in I think I’m going to dig down the edge of the drive and put in some root barrier and concrete blocks behind it to keep the roots going his way. Hopefully it’ll disrupt his driveway and it’s much closer to the corner of his house than mine…..

I need to check the seeds / covenants attached to it for details on walls / fences / hedges

Check out the underground drainage. We moved into a lovely flat. The first winter we were there the patio flooded because the drains were buggered up by tree roots. The water also got into the structure of the building . We had to move out because the damp / mould made us ill. We had a newborn too.

Sounds awful! We’ve been here for 6 years and drainage fine – hedge isn’t in yet so have the chance for a pre-emotive strike to try and avoid issues.

We had lots of conifers around the place when we moved in, but I got myself a chainsaw and massacred the lot of them – hate the things!

Nice bit of diesel into the ground will work too.
Obviously it was a leak from your car….. 😉

And I do have a dirty diesel. Albeit it’s Euro 6 / a 66 plate so slightly unlikely to be leaking but hey.

I can’t help but think you’re going over the top too quickly. Let the moody bugger grow a hedge on his land. So what if it’s pointless. So what if you have to cut it back to your border. and poisoning the ground with diesel etc.? FFS.

I’m not sure who is the unreasonable neighbour right now TBH.

I don’t think many of the suggestions were actually serious Jon. Hate to have to break that to you.

I’d cut to the chase and beat him to death with a shovel and bury him under your new rear patio. Only solution.

I’d cut to the chase and beat him to death with a shovel and bury him under your new rear patio. Only solution.

What if his widow decides to plant the laurel anyway, in memory of her newly departed laurel loving husband? Best be on the safe side and do the two of them.

I love this forum. A bit of light hearted moaning and banter and suddenly I’m the unreasonable neighbour when my neighbour has a proven track record of falling out with the others over ‘unreasonable foliage’.

I’m not about to dump a load of diesel on land right next to mine ffs! Maybe just a bit of salt solution or something like that….. ;-p

Unfortunately we’ve just built a new patio and missed the opportunity to bury them under it….