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Original poster

Neighbour cut our ivy from our fence!

23 replies

AintNobodyHereButUsChickens · 26/03/2023 15:11

I'll start by saying we have no problem from her carefully cutting any bits that are encroaching on her side (the ivy is the only thing holding the fence together...), but she's taken 2ft off the top! The ivy had basically grown into a thick hedge around and over the top of the fence and she's just hacked it right down. It was blocking our view of their garden and now when we sit in our living room we have a direct view onto their decking, and obviously they now have a direct view into our living room.

I get that ivy is totally annoying and destructive, but it's not her fence to worry about, we own it. We are planning on replacing the fence eventually but we don't currently have a few thousand pounds spare to do it. I said to DH we should put some trellis on the top of the fence but ivy is so slow growing that we'd probably have a new fence before it grew back up!

FFS.

OP posts:

AFloridian · 26/03/2023 15:18

If it was 2 ft high on top of the fence then it will have also been hanging down her side into her garden too. It doesn’t just grow vertically.

My boundary has 3 different neighbours ivy grow into my garden. It pisses me off. I’m fed up of having to hack bits back every month, almost weekly in the summer. If you’d kept it under control she wouldn’t have felt the need to take matters into her own hands.

TeenLifeMum · 26/03/2023 15:19

We have a dog and Ivy is poisonous for dogs so I cut it back and pulled out as much as I could.

Floralnomad · 26/03/2023 15:21

Agree with a pp that if it’s 2’ higher than the fence then that is encroaching into her garden , it doesn’t grow straight up .

Hawkins003 · 26/03/2023 15:23

Id like the ivy, but it's a mix with others

bussteward · 26/03/2023 15:44

Ooh, I love ivy but after a while it does become more ivy than fence – like woodchip wallpaper holding up the plaster.

Plant something worse, like bamboo or Russian vine, then kindly agree to tear it out and revert to ivy.

parietal · 26/03/2023 15:50

Ivy will grow back very fast if you put up a trellis.

stealthninjamum · 26/03/2023 15:54

It’s not clear when you say she cut 2 ft off the top so you mean your side? Personally I hate our ivy, I would hug my neighbours if they cut down our ivy. And it’s not right to say it grows slowly, I have to go out every year and remove it from our fences, it grows from my side over to theirs and I would think I’m being a bad neighbour if I didn’t trim it.

funnelfan · 26/03/2023 15:59

If ivy is so thick it can self support to 2 feet high it could also be full of all sorts of wildlife. Which could be great or awful depending on the wildlife and your perspective. They could be cutting it down now before the birds start building nests

carriedout · 26/03/2023 16:04

I'd have a word and ask if she would discuss before cutting down your plants in future. Do you get on generally?

That is very annoying. Ivy is a lovely plant for wildlife and it creates amazing screening.

Original poster

AintNobodyHereButUsChickens · 26/03/2023 16:43

funnelfan · 26/03/2023 15:59

Yep it was full of birds nests all the way along the fence! They love it, dread to think what was hiding in the part that she cut down 🙁

OP posts:

Xrays · 26/03/2023 16:46

Hmm difficult one. We’ve got our neighbours ivy growing on the top of our fence and to be honest I want to chop it down because the weight of it is actually warping the fence and pulling it sideways. It’s very destructive.

LondonPretty · 26/03/2023 16:46

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This has been deleted by MNHQ for breaking our Talk Guidelines.

Redebs · 26/03/2023 16:55

AintNobodyHereButUsChickens · 26/03/2023 16:43

Yep it was full of birds nests all the way along the fence! They love it, dread to think what was hiding in the part that she cut down 🙁

Show quote history

Well it's nesting season now, so it was illegal to disturb nesting birds.

Yellowdays · 26/03/2023 17:45

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I think I agree, tbh. It's common for people to let their plants grow well above the fence and expect others to put up with it. Such as our neighbours and her sodding wisteria. We spend more time pruning that than we do our own garden, in the growing season. Ivy is a similar plant, once it is established.

skippy67 · 26/03/2023 18:14

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Same.

steppemum · 26/03/2023 18:22

we have a short fence between us and neighbours in our front garden.

On our side we have a couple of slow growing plants eg conifers and our bins.
On their side they have ivy.

bloody masses of it. It is about 3 foot thick on their side and grows up about 2 feet above the fence.

We rigorously cut the ivy to the midline, so on our side we have an ugly mass of stems.

But it is a lot of work to keep that ivy out of our garden. Where the fence touches the house, the ivy grows up our house.
We have to cut and cut and cut.
I have scrapped and repainted the house several times, and cut the ivy right back, but it still grows over.

It is YOUR ivy. YOU should control it and keep it out of your neighbour's garden.
Horrendous, intrusive and destructive. Not fun to have it constantly encroaching

GandhiDeclaredWarOnYou · 26/03/2023 18:25

If it was 2' tall above the fence, I don't blame your neighbour.

CC4712 · 26/03/2023 18:31

the ivy is the only thing holding the fence together

If the fence is so brittle/unstable that the ivy is holding it together- then surely its time for YOU to replace it!!! Why should you neighbour have to spend time hacking back your ivy that you can't be bothered to control???

Tron80 · 26/03/2023 18:35

Neighbours Ivy grew over the fence and onto our garage. Asked them repeatedly to cut it back, they didn't. Eventually, they cut it back, to discover it had damaged all the roof mortar on our garage on their side. . WE ended up having to pay £100's to have the roof mortar repaired where THEIR ivy had grown through. They would not engage re reparation costs that their ivy had caused.

Ivy bastards!

Weefreetiffany · 26/03/2023 18:39

Our fences have been destroyed by the lazy neighbour allowing ivy to grow up on their side. So I empathise with your neighbour I’m afraid. It’s awful stuff that hoovers up nutrients and chokes plants and trees.

m also two foot is quite significant addition to a 6ft fence. Perhaps she didn’t want to put up with the additional light loss?

ButtonSister · 26/03/2023 18:42

I would rather look at ivy than an ugly fence, I don't understand the hatred of it.

Throwncrumbs · 26/03/2023 18:44

We had ivy growing on our garden wall, down next doors side as well as our side. Came back from being out one day and the twunt was in our garden ripping it all out of the wall both sides, pulling all the mortar out, doing us a favour apparently! Don’t mind him cutting it back but ripping it out both sides, especially when it has no impact in his garden because we are in a hill and the wall is about 20feet high on his side, so not as if it was on anything of his. Awaiting wall to fall down now that he’s damaged it!

steppemum · 26/03/2023 18:47

ButtonSister · 26/03/2023 18:42

I would rather look at ivy than an ugly fence, I don't understand the hatred of it.

I like the look of it from a distance.
I don't like it damaging our house, pulling the fence apart and growing in huge masses over the space where our wheelie bin is suppose to stand, and choking the plants it grows over.

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