Tonight I noticed my next door neighbours have recently planted a hedge and other shrubs right up against my fence. I guess they have wrongly assumed the fence is the boundary. When we bought the land, there was no fence as it and the boundary is the mid point of the stream between us per the land registers documents. There is quite a slope down to the stream, so the fence is set back 10-12ft from the boundary. We only fenced it so that our sheep could graze the paddock without escaping into their garden.
I know I need to go round there and speak to them. We were planning on replacing the fence this summer anyway, and there’s no way we can do that without damaging the shrubs they’ve just planted as they are so close.
But I hate confrontation - what the hell do I say? We’ve been neighbours for 12 years now, and I don’t want to fall out with them, but this is not an insignificant amount of land, and I’m worried that the sheep will end up eating it anyway - they are very good at sticking their heads though the post and rail to get the juiciest grass!