to remove my hedge

[cocoachannel]

No, not a waxing question.

I live in a typical London terrace. We have a hedge which matches those of neighbours either side. It blocks a lot of our light and local police advice is to remove/lower them for burglary prevention. My question is if you were my next door neighbour either side would you be pissed off about us changing the uniformity of our few houses (others is the road differ). I will of course speak to them but wonder whether I am likely to get a hostile response.

Mmm. You see I wouldn't care about such things but my Dad (70s) would probably have a right wobbly. What are your neighbours like?

Why would you speak to them?

I love my neighbours dearly but until they start paying my mortgage, I wouldn't give them a say in whether I remove the front hedge.

FWIW I think hedges are old fashioned and many properties look much better without them.

That's the thing- I couldn't care less. One side will say they don't mind, the other side is very laid back about most things but seem very precious about all things garden related.

do what you want. your hedge , your mortage

Yes, you see that's my Dad-all precious about grass and what have you.. but it is your hedge to do with what you like. Just tell them you are doing it for security purposes?

If it's your hedge.....then you are free to do as you like.

I personally like a bit of privacy so would be more inclined to shorten it and keep it trim...rather than do away with it altogether.

Wouldn't even ask the neighbours tbh, just go ahead & do it.

Check your deeds/title documents, keeping hedges can be required, this will also tell you whether you 'own' the hedge, often the boundary lies in the middle.

We had a massive Yew hedge in our garden. It took up about 2m of our garden width, out of a total of 7m, and half of our side return. It also blocked out a lot of light from our kitchen.

It was on the side that our neighbours had responsibility to fence.

What we did was go halves on them on the new fence. They never shirked that it was their responsibility, but it was a surprise to them when we removed it (we did it on a whim when we had other work going on). It only cost us £100 each for the fence panels, and we had our builders install them.

The neighbours were pleased because they got lots of extra light too, and a bit of extra space.

If you do it, do wait until any nesting birds have raised their smalls.

What sort of hedge is it? Privit? Hawthorne? No idea?

TBH I'd be more inclined to make it a bit shorter than remove in entirely. Hedges are great things to have.

Oh, VERY good point about nesting birds....they are at it right now...all nesting, having broods/chicks etc....

If you're going to take such drastic action as to remove the hedge altogether then defo wait until early late summer/early Autumn I would say.

Another excellent point re checking the deeds. Your neighbour may own half of the hedge (legally).

As a courtesy....I would discuss with the neighbours...even if I owned the hedge completely.

Our neighbours did this and built a mahoosive wall instead. Within a fortnight, it had graffiti all over it.

The people who were in the house before them had cut the hedge down with the idea that you don't want something trying to burgle your house out of sight of the road. Then the police told them it was a bad idea as burglars could then see their house was worth burgling.

I like hedges, help cuts down noise and pollution.

I have no idea what type of hedge it is, it's not very wide and about 5' tall. It's very sparse really so I can't see any birds but will definitely check. It sits above a short wall, we will retain that and put a short fence above it in line with others on our street.

Thank you for the advice NorthernNumpty