Any gardeners about please?

[Notsogreenfingered]

We live in a semi rural area, boundary shared with NDN for many years - a lovely russet beech hedge.

New NDN were going to rip out - we stood our ground. They have now ripped out half (their side) and are planning to plant laurel as they say existing hedge is dead (it very much isn’t, just changes colour in autumn/winter....)

Besides from not liking the look of laurel (and read can be dangerous to pets and children), will it eventually kill our beech?

Any advice welcomed - NDN is bullish and very aggressive.

Bump for morning crowd!

NDN is a bit dim. I assume they will cut their side of the laurel hedge?

I think it will overpower the beech hedge unfortunately. On the plus side, laurel is attractive to winter birds because it provides more shelter in cold, wet and windy weather.

I think is really mean also. I like Beech as like how the seasons change. Has also been. There for 20 years!!

Beech is amazing. We planted a 140 foot beech hedge at our first house in 1995 - I just checked on Google Earth and it is still there. On the other side we had a 200 year old tight hawthorn hedge. They made the perfect backdrops to herbaceous borders. It would take me a whole weekend to trim them with hand-shears!

Your neighbours are tossers.

It's unlikely that the laurel will affect the beech, unless they do considerable damage to the roots when planting.