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.

That's awful. Definitely check it there was a preservation order on it if it predates the houses. You can get an unlimited fine if you chop a tree down with a TPO on it. We've just bought a house with two massive oak trees in the garden and can't even prune them without permission!

If you want a tree with catkins as a maximum annoyance type thing (though you’d have to accept some annoyance in your own garden) I can highly recommend White Poplar. The female trees produce copious amounts of huge white fluffy cottonlike seed pods late summer. They float around on the wind and stick to anything they land on. I’ve got six of them surrounding my garden (not mine) and once they get going each year I can’t even open my windows without the whole house being covered in sticky white fluff. I love the trees though. They were pollarded recently (they were over 50 foot high, down to 20 now) and they’ll grow back fine. In the meantime I’ve luckily got enough of my own trees to keep the privacy around the boundary in tact.

Like this

You can try and fins some local guerrilla knitters, the ones who wrap objects in knitting, the tree in your case. I'm sure they can spell cunt in purling if you ask them nicely.

@Insert1x20p

I would not do bamboo as it spreads underground and is a bitch to control - you have to put concrete trenches in it to keep it contained- although I guess you could concrete your side and let it run rampant on hers, watching her play Bamboo whakamole until she feels like a persecuted panda

Hahahahaha that’s a great idea!

@sarahC40
This is terrible. So many people don’t care that we all need trees to breath -what haters

Most of the people who get rid of trees that shouldn’t be got rid of are probably control freaks who want to control everything -they want things to be their way and no one not even a tree that cleans their air for them is going to get their way above them

@GlomOfNit
Your NDN was another control freak!

I'd contact the council. Round here a tree has to dead as blue parrot before they'll let you fell it ( or even trim it back).

Fines are decent, to deter developers. You have to post a public planning application months in advance and they are usually refused unless the reasons are serious property damage or risk to public H&S.

@SchadenfreudePersonified - I love fruit bats too, they are super-intelligent and have the cutest faces. (Babies are adorable!) Unfortunately, here they are infected with a transmissible virus that is related to rabies. (Lyssavirus). Also, due to the fact that they eat a lot of fruit (duh...) their shit is highly acidic. Can take the paint off your car if left for too long. Bats crap from a height, and it splatters over a vast surface. (And has bits in it.) Also, as someone who has briefly looked after injured ones, they sleep hanging upside down in trees with their wings wrapped around their bodies, weeing on themselves. The membranes of their wings create a lovely environment for them to cook up the smell of the wee trapped in their fur in the heat and humidity, and their isn’t a smell quite like them. 🤢🤮🤢 Sugar gliders are much nicer to look after. They fit on your pocket, and their poo is dry. They wee on a tissue. Plus, they look like this...

Plant yourself a stag's horn sumach right at the end of your garden. Not only are they fast-growing and spectacularly beautiful throughout summer and autumn, they are also aggressive and send out runners which throw up loads of mini plants. You can enclose it under the ground, so the runner goes out in one direction only (i.e. towards your neighbour).

Off to google stags horn stumach ....

Yep. They left a 20ft ‘stump’ 👀

www.5shirestreesurgery.co.uk/tree-felling-and-removal

@SylHellais

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.

Why, given how scathing you are, did you even bother to type anything? People like you really make me smile - I don’t care what you think of me and my reaction, which was real and given the enormous number of neighbours who’ve gulped a bit and dropped around little commiserations (mostly wine) I think I’m pretty much on the mark. Off you trot to try to ruffle someone else’s feathers 😘😘

@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

That’s gorgeous - googling whether I will need a crane 😀

[quote 21BumbleBees]@SchadenfreudePersonified that little fruitbat is so sweet - thanks for posting that. There are bat boxes in trees near us and they are fascinating to watch bobbing around in the summer evenings.

OP - please fix bat boxes in your new tree![/quote]
We have lots of bats that flit up and down the gardens on summer evenings - love bats

@sarahC40 In case you missed it, I did actually sympathise with you in my previous post. I do think your description was pretty emotionally charged and not very helpful but that’s hardly surprising.

It was actually the numerous other posters claiming to have sobbed for days over a cut tree and the repeated posts saying to report it to the council which I was commenting on.

But go ahead and be snidey and rude to me if it makes you feel better.

[quote SylHellais]@sarahC40 In case you missed it, I did actually sympathise with you in my previous post. I do think your description was pretty emotionally charged and not very helpful but that’s hardly surprising.

It was actually the numerous other posters claiming to have sobbed for days over a cut tree and the repeated posts saying to report it to the council which I was commenting on.

But go ahead and be snidey and rude to me if it makes you feel better.[/quote]
Do you know what, stroll on, my love. You’ve no need to bother your head about. I will cope and have someone coming out to do a garden survey tomorrow. All will be well and you can go on to something else. 😉

*it. Curse that lack of edit button when you’re cooking tea 🙄

Sure, whatever.

You know, I was actually quite sympathetic towards you to begin with but your replies to people have become increasingly unpleasant. The smug, patronising ‘trot on, my love’ type replies just make you sound rather rude and obnoxious.

@SylHellais You're someone who thinks pollarding a mature tree is perfectly acceptable, so you won't understand this situation and I don't know why you keep insisting your opinion is the only valid one, if not to assuage your conscience that you yourself have caused permanent disfigurement to a perfectly good tree.
I don't know why people come on threads to be rude and aggressive.

You're someone who thinks pollarding a mature tree is perfectly acceptable

The mature trees round here are pollarded regularly.

Interestingly, this suggests that this is exactly the right time to be doing it too.

www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=156