To tell my neighbour to sod off next time she comments on my garden

I’d tell her to be careful. You know with the risk of falling from climbing on furniture and being elderly and all that.
I mean you’re clearly looking out for her and don’t want her to break a hip or something right?

Tell her the only type of gardening you’re interested in is ‘trimming your bush’..,that will shut her up 😁

for me "keep your fucking head out of my fucking garden" would manage the situation nicely.

For a start, tell her you want to give the pollinators a chance so you’re only cutting the grass once a month. As a PP suggested plant three-cornered leek and convolvulus up her sodding fence and tell her you’re rewilding.

I pay someone to do the heavy lifting in my tiny garden and even so it’s about three hours of my time a week to keep it looking reasonable. Not everyone has the time or energy.

I think you and the rest of your street were well rid 😆 👏

This just reminded me of something - once upon a time a new neighbour moved into the street my family lived on, a few doors down. She appeared at our front door one day and asked if she could come in and look at our garden. My mum asked why and she said in her previous street she’d had the best garden so wanted to see what she was up against and was knocking on everyone’s doors. My mum said there wasn’t anything to see in ours (we’d not long got our dog who’d bitten the heads off/dug up every flower we had and had decided it wasn’t worth putting anything new in) but she insisted on looking. Not sure why my mum didn’t just tell her to sod off but think she was caught off guard and felt awkward, however my mum did say to her “all the neighbours on this stretch have been here years and we’ve never been a competitive bunch to be honest as we all get on well”.

Anyway she gets to the back garden just in time to see the dog in question run out onto the grass and do a turd in the dead centre 😂 she looked horrified, left without saying a word and then put her house up for sale again a few months later citing she was returning to her old street because she preferred the people there!

Except I didn’t ask for a quote to do my garden. He interrupted my work day to tell me I wasn’t keeping on top of my garden ( lawn is mown, we have a small native hedgerow, forever fighting a battle with the weeds) and he would do it for that price..won’t approach my husband with any of his issues.. just likes to moan to me and then play it down when husband raises it!

We were similar, worked full time with long commutes and travel, at the same time as taking professional quals etc to better our careers and the garden was not a priority. It’s our property and our prerogative, our lack of gardening never encroached on their properties.

The neighbours who criticised and slagged us off about our garden are 25/30 years older than us and had more time because they worked fixed hours, locally, 5 days a week. Our aim was to pay our mortgage off in our forties which we did.

Subsequently we found out that the main neighbour who was gossiping and complaining about our garden is still paying a mortgage and it boils their blood that they still have to work in their seventies. We’ve now cut our hours and focus far less on work and more on our home.

We still have quite a wild garden, but it’s become very floral and kind of looks after itself with only a little help. It boils our moany neighbours blood even more that the kerb appeal we have is significantly better than theirs and we get stacks of compliments from visitors, delivery drivers etc. about how beautiful the front of our house and garden looks especially in Spring and Summer

Just tell her you are rewilding because it’s better for the environment and Prince William himself told you that. Then don’t engage any longer.

Next time she nose about ask her for the gardeners telephone and the rose brand because you saw her having a lovely day and you want to so it.
She wont comment on your garden anymore.

DDad started surreptitiously sorting out his neighbour’s garden because it was ‘annoying him’. Started subtly with the hedge, then progressed to sneaking over and cutting her grass while she was out. I told him he was being appalling and needed to stop, but he kept on doing it, getting bolder and bolder with the jobs he did.

Eventually I was passing and saw her, so I popped over to apologise for his terrible behaviour. She told me she was thrilled and to thank him! They are both very private people but they now occasionally chat and pass the time of day, which is lovely. DDad has a history of alienating neighbours, has no friends and is generally antisocial, so this development is surprising and makes me happy!

Not really relevant to your situation op, sorry for the tangent.

Tell her you have been doing some gardening on her advice, youre not sure about which plants but thought the japanese knotweed would look fantastic as a hedge in the front and you are planting bamboo all along the fence in the back and are planting it next week.

I have a neighbour like this - comments on our hedge A LOT. He's a twat. Thankfully quite a few other neighbours also think he's a twat.

We're the only house on the road with 2DC and both of us work full time. The garden is at the bottom of our to do list.

To be fair, assuming one was self employed and not tax dodging, that's cheap....

Or electrified razor wire?

I know I’m missing the point of the thread but as someone who is also solely responsible for garden upkeep and has a full time job I can totally recommend a robot lawnmower. No more finding that hour or two on the not too hot not too wet already busy weekend.

Next time tell her she's very welcome to come and do it for you if it bothers her that much!

Mine talks to me about mine - always giving the Latin name for whatever plant I have in the ground while almost always telling me how I have planted it in the wrong place or it needs cutting back or look at them weeds or what am I do there and a disagreeing ‘oh’ when I explain. I do wonder why she didn’t buy my house instead of me so she could do it all how she wants!

But you do have to drive later, so you're not knocking it back and the riposte stands.

"Come off it Petunia! You don't even do your garden. You sit on your bum glugging rosè!"

This is not a dig, btw at harmless souls who glug rosè (or anything else) while minding their own business. It's just for sanctimonious pests like the OP's neighbour.

ALL our neighbours are retired & spend a lot of time gardening. I work ft & dh is a wheelchair user so gardening is not at the top of my priorities! I’m sure they all whisper about us but I couldn't care less! The council cut the grass every 4 weeks & it is a bit of a mess now as they are due next week! If any of my neighbours complain I’ll tell them they are more than welcome to bring their lawn mower round & cut it 🤣

This is very common. So many people just play along with two faced neighbours for a quiet life. They’ll be slagging off each other soon to you or someone else, I guarantee it

'Needs cut' is perfectly correct Scottish dialect. Just because it's unfamiliar to you doesn't make it 'appalling English'.

Well, you try getting a co-codomol scrip out of your GP. Maybe they're growing their own opiates.

Grass 'needs cut' is the most appalling English. If that's how she talks, I'd just ignore anything she says. Well done OP. It's your garden, your business.

I think it's nice that your neighbour will pop their head up and chat. You are so lucky. She is a precise personality; but you are known to each other which is great.

I wish I had a neighbour who would offer to garden for a fee.