to think tall trees should be banned in small gardens

[twistedsista]

OK I will probably be told I'm being entilied, but both my neighbours have huge trees in their gardens that really blocks out the sun and makes it difficult to grow much.

They wouldn't be allowed to build a structure 30ft high in their garden so don't see why they should be allowed trees so big! Just want to sit in the sun on my garden!

Did they grow the trees themselves? It's much more likely that they were already there when they bought the house and they just aren't cutting them down. YABU though, nature is different to ugly structures.

There is a tree in my tiny garden that was more of a bush when we bought the place which has now grown huge.

I quite like it. I have no idea if my neighbours mind it or not, they've never said anything although it does block sunlight from their garden for part of the day. If they wanted it chopped back, that would be fine by me as long as they paid. Tree cutters cost a fortune.

I have a huge tree in my small garden.

It is 170 years old and has a preservation order on it.

It was here first and I bought knowing about it. However, trees are more important than buildings on the whole, so YABU.

Round here am the houses had two fruit trees planted in the garden when they were built. Every single garden has one huge sprawling apple tree and one tall leggy pear. It's lovely, makes the other houses seem less close and we get tonnes of birds and wildlife.

Were the trees there when you moved in?
Also usually big deciduous trees have a preservation order on them.

YABU. Trees are lovely, I really don't like neighbourhoods without them.

If the tree was there before you were YABU. And if it wasn't as big then, well, they do grow . . .

Not all trees are lovely.

My friends had a sycamore that had probably self-seeded in their small garden some years before they moved in.

They didn't mind it at first but these things grow like weeds. They had no light in their ground floor kitchen, you couldn't see sky in the garden and the garden was damp and smelly.

So they applied to the council for permission to chop it down. A neighbour who lived in a top floor flat above the tree line objected because 'London needs trees.'

Not in people's tiny back gardens it doesn't. The council told my friends to go ahead.

There's another sycamore a few doors away. It doesn't affect me but the roots have demolished the garden wall which is dangerous. I guess it's not doing a lot of good to their foundations.

The two neighbours want to get rid of it. They're trying to come to an agreement about the costs of felling it and carting it away. It's about 60 ft tall.

I exaggerated there. I'd say it was a mere 40ft, so no real problem

One of my neighbours has 9 conifers which were until recently 80ft tall. The council forced their landlord to cut them down to 30ft with the high hedges act. It looked similar to this monstrousity.

www.havering.gov.uk/Pages/Services/High-hedges-and-hedgerows.aspx

What annoys me about the high hedges act is that my local council force the complaintant to pay £500 for the council to arbitrate. Even if the complainant wins they do not get refunded the £500. Even if there is an order to reduce the height of the edge then its nexts to impossible to enforce.

We are lucky in that our neighbours are tenants and were happy to allow access to tree surgeons.

ReallyTired £500 is standard. It's a complicated matter and there's no reason why it should be free. The neighbours who are ordered to cut back the tree should be required to pay - certainly if they have not agreed to a previous request in writing - but the enforcement of small debts in our judicial system . . . well, don't get me started!

I once lived in an area of south west london that had alternate white and mauve lilac trees in the gardens. They'd been planted when the houses were built sometime around the mid Victorian era and had grown huge over the years. The smell was fabulous, you could almost drown in it, and the sight from one end of the roads to the other was beautiful.

I think the only time you can complain is if it is so tall that it interferes with power cables or it is likely to root under your house.
The former was the case with our neighbours and the council came round and made them take them down at the cost of over 1k.

YABU. All the houses in our road have smallish gardens with mature trees in them. We keep them maintained but the guy in the house behind absolutely hates them because he built decking about two years ago and says the trees block out the sun for an hour or two in the afternoon.

He's constantly nagging us to get them cut down or significantly reduced but we all refuse because we like the trees. They give privacy from the houses behind and they make the gardens look nice.

You could speak to your neighbours and offer to help pay for them to be cut back but banning trees is a bit daft.

I like trees. Of course trees are preferable to buildings, but that doesn't mean you have to like sitting in a cold shady garden all the time because your neighbour has massive trees.

I sympathise. We have massive trees to the west of our garden and by the evening most of our garden is in shade. Really frustrating in the summer, we're outdoors a lot, we like to eat and entertain outdoors but by the evening we've lost all the lovely sunshine and it's cold. Unfortunately we don't own that particular bit of land so there's nothing we can do.

Mind you I am tempted to go round and ask if they could be thinned out a bit. I don't mind paying.

It depends on the tree. Lilac bushes are pretty but when they've finished blooming I wish people would lop the rusty dead heads off. Similarly with fruit trees. I don't appreciate people leaving dropped fermented fruits to attract wasps and rats.

Not sycamore or leylandii, which are fast-growing invasive weeds. I'd count rhododendron in that too, though I think it looks really lovely. Japanese knotweed is pretty too.

I have a beautiful ivy grove in my small garden. Different types; some with tiny multi-coloured leaves of yellow and green and white; some dark green leaves bigger than my hand that bear flowers and berries. Some of those stems are twice the thickness of my thumb.

It's not only beautiful but a haven for insects and therefore birds. But I control it and if my neighbours complained I'd be out there with the clippers.

My parents had an ornamental cherry which was planted when they moved in. It was very pretty for about a fortnight in bloom and then shed its thousands of petals all over the shop. Then it grew an extra foot or so.

You couldn't even get cherries off it because it wasn't a proper cherry tree. So, like George Washington, they chopped it when it was as tall as the house and about 5ft from the back door.

We have several out of control large trees in our garden. The landlord refuses to pay to have them cut back/down/trimmed.
We're not staying beyond the next six months, so I'm sorry, but we won't be shelling out to have them done either.
Perhaps some of the trees you object to, OP, are in rental properties.

If you were my neighbour I wouldn't blame you humpty. You're renting. If I was your neighbour, I'd take it up with your landlord.

But it would be tedious.

It is expensive to get rid of these things once they take hold and do damage. However, that is one of the many responsibilities of buy-to-let landlord that that some of them don't get.

Money coming in - great. Money going out - not so great.

I live in an urban environment. I have a small garden and have learned to root out self-seeding things that I first thought were charming and later realised were not lovely trees or bushes but weeds that cause problems for me and my neighbours.

Absolutely. We do as much gardening as we know how to, so that we don't get in trouble for spoiling the garden, but the trees, we can't do anything with, and it's very unfair on our neighbours.