There are two strangers sat in my garden eating their dinner

[Scrowy]

I've told them it's private property and not part of the footpath that passes next to it. Apparently they will be on their way soon.

I've now chickened out of saying anything else but I'm passive aggressively watering the hanging baskets about 5m away from them and they are very deliberately not making eye contact with me.

Start chatting and tell them it is nice to see people as , since you now have covid, sadly your friends and family no longer visit......

Sprinkler & switch on the hose

I'd never thought the words 'Git Orf of Moi Land' would pass my lips until I lived here. We don't have, or need, great long fences because the front garden is kept mowed and is so clearly part of the property. Except to the people who turn off the lane and park (sometimes adjacent to my drive and feet away from the front door) anywhere they fancy in the garden. I've a pumphouse at one side (rural property with no mains) and more than once I've had someone complain that they'd tried to use it as a toilet only to find that I'd clearly removed all the useful facilities. Are people so unaccustomed to the countryside that they don't realise that people routinely site public toilets in their gardens? Or that gardens, and the produce therein, mightn't be some sort of public amenity or a source of tasty teas? I'm not unwelcoming - outside of pandemics - but I do wonder at how reasonable all these peope would be if I rocked up outside their houses and made free with their gardens after picking all the fruit and veg in them.

What do you do? Well I start by politely asking if they know it is my garden. If ignored, I might get shouty. Dog, of course, who looks wild and wolfy and would, at first glance, suggest he could eat a trespasser simply wants to say hello and welcome. People pleasing buffoon.

Time for a hedge? X

Fences. And a backbone.

I'd never thought the words 'Git Orf of Moi Land' would pass my lips until I lived here. We don't have, or need, great long fences because the front garden is kept mowed and is so clearly part of the property. @EnidPrunehat

Evidently not 😂. Might I suggest a fence and a gate?

Go and have a fag out there, watch them start coughing and flapping their hands.
Or even better a Churchill cigar which takes an hour to smoke.

My theory is that it's the first bit of proper shade

I've just come back from a morning out with the DCs it's freezing! Nevertheless shade or not your garden is not a picnic spot. Tell them to clear off.

Getting someone wet classes as assault??

Yes it can do. Friend's husband got a nice telling off from the local constabulary after they arrived home from work to find people in their garden for the 50th time in such a short time frame. It was the turning the hose on the one adult relieving themselves the police objected to...

I'd be inclined to buy some sprinklers OP.

Can't you fence your garden off?

@Bluntness100

Are either of them an elderly Korean lady?

@Bluntness100

🤣🤣

I love that thread!!!

Brilliant diagram! Reminds me of a map at the front of a Jilly Cooper book!

@Dillydollydingdong

Can't you fence your garden off?

Why should she ? It has a blooming great wall, and a cart road between it and the path and they had to go threw a gate and over a cattle grid, not accidentely wandered onto it

You have such lovely writing @Scrowy
Simply a superb diagram, sorry you had to be impinged upon in order to share your drawing skills.

@RustyBear I love that photo, hilarious

Can't you fence your garden off?

Why should she? I walk in the countryside quite a bit. It's usually quite clear which bits are private and which aren't. Although I'm sure the recent addition or covering all bits in electric fencing has had that benefit. Hint hint OP

Reminds me of someone I know who challenged a family picnicking in her garden. The response:

"People like you think you own the land"

Fences, gates? Pah! These are nothing to the full blown cf. my front door is located down the side of my house, under an archway with metal gates on, my yard is further back. We live in a market town. I came home years ago to find a pair of lesser spotted cfs sat at my garden table eating ice creams. They were in no rush to leave when faced with my spluttering rage!

@EnidPrunehat

I'd never thought the words 'Git Orf of Moi Land' would pass my lips until I lived here. We don't have, or need, great long fences because the front garden is kept mowed and is so clearly part of the property. Except to the people who turn off the lane and park (sometimes adjacent to my drive and feet away from the front door) anywhere they fancy in the garden. I've a pumphouse at one side (rural property with no mains) and more than once I've had someone complain that they'd tried to use it as a toilet only to find that I'd clearly removed all the useful facilities. Are people so unaccustomed to the countryside that they don't realise that people routinely site public toilets in their gardens? Or that gardens, and the produce therein, mightn't be some sort of public amenity or a source of tasty teas? I'm not unwelcoming - outside of pandemics - but I do wonder at how reasonable all these peope would be if I rocked up outside their houses and made free with their gardens after picking all the fruit and veg in them.

What do you do? Well I start by politely asking if they know it is my garden. If ignored, I might get shouty. Dog, of course, who looks wild and wolfy and would, at first glance, suggest he could eat a trespasser simply wants to say hello and welcome. People pleasing buffoon.

Maybe if an especially thick city-dweller sees freshly mowed grass, they'll think the council's been and done it and it must be a public park. A "garden" here means an overgrown tangle of brambles with some beer cans littered throughout.

We live in an AONB and this year, for the first time in 20 years of living here, we had a couple sitting eating a takeaway in their car on our driveway!!

It's a rough track that leads to ours and our neighbours garages and admittedly has a cracking view but it's very obvious that it's private.

I live in London so no-one has ever picnicked in my front garden. But some CFs have tried parking in my drive.

Do you not have a fence/wall?

I’m still agog at the fact the OP informed them it was private land then walked meekly away when they refused to move. I know a lot of MNers are terrified of confrontation or being rude but there is not a single chance in hell I would have let them get away with that.

Install a sprinkler system

Have they gone yet OP?