Last fucking straw

[sarahC40]

Handhold please and advice (on how not to utterly lose my shit or get arrested for this). It’s not been a great lockdown.

Saving Grace: my garden. Lovely tree, probably in the wrong place but predates the houses, was cut down without warning, so that my view, which was of said lovely tree, is now of the back of someone’s house. They have now closed all of their blinds because, yes, we are now overlooking each other.

The tree is in no man’s land between the gardens - it doesn’t belong to them. They’ve got down everything that overhung my garden (my son woke up to find men climbing over my fence and most of tree gone) and they’ve left a twenty foot high stump. My other neighbours were open mouthed in shock, so this isn’t just me sounding off; it’s horrendous.

I know there’s nothing that I can do, but I would like some vengeful suggestions that I won’t act on but will help me as I try to stop crying at the fucking awful sight of their fugly house.

Feel your pain, fellow tree lover. Some bastard cut down the dogwoods that gave my house privacy and I felt physically sick. I asked him to stop whilst I spoke to the neighbour responsible so he sawed through each one at ground level whilst I had that conversation. I learned to plant stuff on my land. There is a beautiful tree at the end of my garden. Neighbour's tree. If they ever cut it down I'm buying a fuck off replacement. It's so lush. Completely blocks my view of their house. I look forward to its first leaves each year. Cheap too. Google golden false acacia, looks like this

We used to have a garden with a Cherry Tree at the bottom. In Chelmsford. Then we moved up here and I have no house no life nothing.

If you're looking to replant it, some of the trees that we'd had success with growing nice and big are an elm (Dutch Elm disease resistant important), horse chestnut and magnolia. The horse chestnut in particular has grown big quickly!

@ThatsAllFolks

Feel your pain, fellow tree lover. Some bastard cut down the dogwoods that gave my house privacy and I felt physically sick. I asked him to stop whilst I spoke to the neighbour responsible so he sawed through each one at ground level whilst I had that conversation. I learned to plant stuff on my land. There is a beautiful tree at the end of my garden. Neighbour's tree. If they ever cut it down I'm buying a fuck off replacement. It's so lush. Completely blocks my view of their house. I look forward to its first leaves each year. Cheap too. Google golden false acacia, looks like this

We have one of those golden false acacia at the end corner of our garden. It's so stunning when the leaves are against a blue sky. It is the last tree to get its blossom but the last to lose its leaves. If we move from this house I will definitely plant one in another garden.

It is against the law to cut down trees during nesting

Time for a tall tree house overlooking. their window and yard.

If you search your 'local council TPO map' their will be a big map with lots of info.

Just select on the layers under Land Use - TPO.

Zoom into your house and have a wee look.

Id buy a load of trees the biggest i could afford,( depending on finances can buy them any height) google tree root ball suppliers, and plant them right along!

That’s outrageous.

It’s also illegal as it’s nesting season. Ring the tree protection person at the council. They can’t put it back but they might fine them and make them pay to plant a new tree.

Very sorry I would be spitting.

So she has only just moved in and without even discussing it with you allowed strangers on your land and cut the tree down with no care for your feelings or privacy? I'd be buying the biggest tree I could, or the fastest growing and plant a s tonne of them on this "no mans land"
Honestly I would lose my cool very quickly xxx

What an awful neighbour. It's a shame there will be no proof left that there were nesting birds in it. She could have been charged with illegally cutting it down if that were the case.
I don't know how big a hole you should dig but I have recently read that it should be a square hole not a circular one. In circular holes the roots keep going round and round if the soil around it is too hard leaving it quite unstable. A square hole encourages the roots to dig through at the corners helping to stabilise it quickly.

We have a mahoosive weeping willow. Probably not for the feint hearted though. It's bloody enormous.

Just a thought but when I ran a youth group years ago the kids freaked out the neighbours by putting a theatre mannequin in a window dressed to look like Jesus, all in white so it sort of glowed in the moonlight... if they can see into your windows i something like that might make them wish they left the tree there....

Plant another tree

I’d go for a Red Robin, you want evergreen so you don’t have to see her house in winter.
There’s a huge weeping willow hanging over my garden. Sheds horribly but so beautiful.

@Vicliz24

Try an Amelanchier they grow really fast and have beautiful Spring blossom and gorgeous new foliage colour and Autumn interest too . Plus they're a big shrub so lots of woody twigs to provide Winter shielding. I'm so sorry about the tree 🌲

I should have read further down the posts as I was trying to remember the name of this tree! I agree, you should plant one of these op! They look so beautiful.

I blocked out a neighbour with two pots of bamboo from B & Q. They were very tall, length of my car £20 each and I knew they would grow even taller and wider, just commonist bamboo & best bit was hearing neighbour complaining for years about the runners/ bamboo shoots popping up everywhere next door🤣🤣she never dared say anything to my stones face🤣

There are a lot of people on this thread with a tenuous grip on reality, an inability to read and unrealistic expectations.

Once again, if the tree doesn’t have a TPO on it, the council will not give a shiny shit, let alone put the foliage police on defcon 1, despite what some posters appear to believe.

The OP has only provided very vague and emotionally charged descriptions of the tree’s new appearance. It sounds like it’s been pollarded (in the absence of any photo) which is hardly chopping the whole thing down. We pollarded ours last month - it looks bare but I know it won’t look like that for long.

These people sobbing for days over a cut tree - I don’t believe you sobbed for days because that would be physically impossible. If you claim you sobbed for days, no, you didn’t and you’re lying for effect.

This thread and the one about fake grass just make me massively eye roll about MN hyperbole.

Stoney face!

@DishingOutDone

You can buy different types of amelanchier that one in the picture looks like the bush type.

This one is more tree sized www.paramountplants.co.uk/plant/alsf/amelanchier-laevis-snowflakes.html

Amelanchier grows sooooo slowly. Like a few inches a year. Not a great screening tree

arbtalk.co.uk/forums/topic/51440-re-pollard-or-crown-reduction-on-ash-tree/

There's some pics here of an ash which was pollarded and grew back again. (it's actually about how the tree grew back too much again!) But is this any comfort OP? Ash trees are resilient buggers

It doesn't sound as if an amelanchier would be tall enough. Personally I'd go for a group of multi stemmed birches, we put some in a few years ago and they grow quite fast. They're obviously not evergreen but you get a decent screen of twiggy bits and the lovely white trunks. We got 3 on special offer for under £50.

The fruit bats were attracted to the lights on the tennis courts and when the trees all produced fruit, began shitting red, white and blue all over the fucking thing as well.

Fruit bats are fab!

There was a short video on twitter of one in a fruit bat rescue place. He only had one eye, and was very, very old -they estimated 30 years (he'd been at the rescue for yonks!).

He couldn't fly any more, but one of the assailants carried him around while he flapped his wings. I did a quick search and found the video on facebook.

www.facebook.com/watch/?v=732309461047735

Just watch him get stuck in to that bowl of fruit! I hope he lives FOREVER!

Willows aren't a great idea, they spread so far and would take up a huge amount of space. If they get too big they need pruning properly at least every other year.