To chalk this up as CFery, and cancel the sleepover?

[Skittlesandbeer]

Backstory: we live 9 months a year in an urban centre, 3 months each year we move to the country to bring in a harvest at our small farm.

We have a great relationship with our all our farm neighbours, and try hard to be good community members even though we are crazy busy when we are at the farm (as we are now). Our next-door neighbours have become quite close with us in recent years, due to us having DDs the same age (7) who adore each other.

Last summer, unbeknownst to us, they decided to heavily ‘prune’ the row of 25yo bushy cypress trees which form the ‘fence’ between our properties, about 15 trees. Basically they stripped all the lower branches, to over 2 metres from the ground, think lollipops. It effectively makes it look like one property, rather than two, and took away a lot of our privacy as well as wind-protection and gave us line of sight to a busy road.

The trees were originally planted on our side of the boundary (trunks), with large branches on either side. The neighbours needed to be on our property to complete half the job, and a big 3-4 day job it would’ve been, too. They didn’t get in touch before, during or after.

When I saw it, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I actually stood there, rubbing my eyes and shaking my head in case I was seeing things. Their chickens, dogs and kids had evidently been using our garden as an extension to theirs all year. I invited her over for tea and asked her through fairly clenched teeth what had happened. She was shocked we didn’t like the new look, and seemed to expect thanks for all their hard work😧. I was quite proud at how calmly I told her that no, we were going to need them to reinstate the boundary with something equally natural (ie not some cheap metal panelling) asap. At this point she gets teary and tells me they are putting their house on the market, and are short of funds due to property improvements they’ve made. (Yeah, like the chainsaw fuel they needed to double their garden space, I thought loudly).

I stood my ground and made sure DH did the same seperately with neighbour DH. He (but not she) apologised profusely, said ‘it made sense to do it at the time, but now that you explain it, I can see we did the wrong thing’. He is a builder by trade so we agreed he would consider the fencing options, and get back to us. We tried to look at it as a ‘spilt milk’ situation, and got on with our harvest.

Fast forward 2 months. We’re nearing the end of our farm work, kids have been playing together a lot, families sharing food, help, excursions, etc. A few times we’ve raised the fence topic, looking to get it resolved before they formally put their house up for sale, so we don’t have randoms walking through our property when we’re not here. Vague nodding from them. Today I go over to get firm confirmation of the plan, and timings. She squares off at me and states that they will not be doing or paying anything towards the fence, that they were completely justified in what they did, that we should stop pestering them about it when they’ve got so much on their plates (designing their new house) and anyway, we’re hardly ever here to use our garden so why are we making such an unreasonable fuss?

I’m stood there like then burst into tears and run off home. I’m usually so capable and practical and calm, but she’s ruined my lovely private garden, devalued my property, patently waited until I’m trying to finalise our business and pack up the house to drop this bombshell. Admittedly I’m exhausted and stressed, and fairly ‘peopled out’.

The girls have a long-awaited sleepover at theirs on Saturday, before we leave Monday. AIBU to fake an excuse to cancel it (with all the drama it’ll cause with the girls) and add further bad feeling? I just want a quiet few days to figure out what to do with these CFs, and finish my work. I thought they were sane, and friends. Unless of course we’ve been unreasonable too?

I'm with nellieellie on this one.

I'd send a text saying that due to their recent announcement that they will not be installing a fence due to their over eager 'pruning' and trespassing, you are no longer able to host their daughter at a sleepover. If they are willing to review their position on this matter and begin the job to fix what they did, then you might reconsider the sleepover but only once work has begun on installing a fence. This cost and issue could have been so easily avoided but they have brought this on themselves.

I too would seek legal advice from a solicitor about what you can do next and if the neighbours don't take steps to remedy the situation they have caused, you will be left with no alternative but to contact the estate agent and let them know that there is an ongoing dispute and that it needs to be sorted before the sale can go through and you're getting legal advice about it.

Best of luck!

What would a lawsuit achieve?
And how feasible is this when you're not there 9 months out of the year? It will be long, drawn out, costly, and you will be flying back and forth to do battle.
I think suing will bring more pain than gain.

Upstart
Really? You can graft branches onto trees. I’d be looking for that then.

Skittles
A couple of us have asked how far away from the boundary the trees are. Could you tell us please?

I also cannot get my head round them having no money when they clearly are moving to a larger property and renting in the interim until it’s ready. I think perhaps they’ve tied all their spare cash up but that’s not your problem.

Don’t do the sleepover and get a stiffly worded solicitors letter requesting grafting of new branches or a fence erecting on the boundary, which meets with your approval.

What would a lawsuit achieve?

In the UK a formal neighbour dispute must be declared and would jeopardise the sale, or any prospect of one. The OP says she is not in the UK so this might not apply. However, if it does, it’s a powerful tool against CF neighbours hoping to make a sale.

Cypress won't grow back if you've cut beyond the green wood. You can prune a cypress hedge by cutting back the tips of the branches, but if you've taken out whole branches, they will not grow back.

It may be difficult to get something established in the dry ground beneath the cypresses, so your only long term solution may be to remove them all and start again. This is pretty major damage they've done, you've tried to resolve it amicably, so it's time to look into the legal side.

Meanwhile, get something in place to establish the boundary.

Id let them have the sleepover and then when they move I imagine it will be easy to simply avoid meet ups and your daughter will hopefully move on.

Def put up some orange netting.

I would also draft a clearly set out email explaining your points - which are very reasonable - maybe a pros and cons table putting your position compared to their position. They clearly know they're being fuckwits.

Then I'd suck it up and move on - grating as that may be.

You can graft branch tips into the trunk.

[[https://www.bonsaiempire.com/basics/cultivation/advanced/grafting-trees[[

Dammit link fail
www.bonsaiempire.com/basics/cultivation/advanced/grafting-trees

I would definitely cancel sleepover and do something nice with DD instead. And tell them if they don't sort things out very quickly you will be taking legal action. Not a wise idea to send DD there when you are in conflict with her mother.

Upstart Crow's link is for bonsai - that's not going to work on a full size tree - a decent sized branch is too heavy to fix for grafting and there's no point grafting twigs.

It's not just leylandii (a cypress hybrid) that won't regrow after heavy pruning - very few conifers will regrow. Yew is one of the very few that will.

Trees of this size will place heavy demands on the water and nutrient in the ground around, so "planting bushes in the gaps" will be extremely hard, especially if you are not around for 9 months of the year for watering.

I'm sorry to be depressing, but there are no easy solutions.

Upstart
That looks very expensive.

My issue would be what would stop the neighbours from coming back onto ops land to sabotage this even if they were made to pay for it. What a sad situation.

Chortling at the thought of using bonsai techniques on a long row of 25 year-old rural boundary cypresses - you’d be there a while 😂

I would send them a letter saying:

a) you have a month to put up a suitable replacement of the trees on your property they damaged
b) if they do not, then you will put up barbed wire with a big sign on their side saying "XX DO NOT TRESSPASS INTO OUR GARDEN AND DESTROY OUR PROPERTY AGAIN"

If they're trying to sell the house and won't either reimburse you for the damage they did or rectify it, I'd make it very hard for them to sell their house.

You need a fence, post and wire will do. The top strand could be barbed wire to stop people climbing over. Or a strand of electric fence? You can get fencing units which plug into the mains - there is a resistor (?) which makes sure it's just a painful not damaging zap.
That should be pretty cheap to do.
Do not leave without marking your boundaries with a fence, or you will come back and find a big chunk of your garden is now "theirs".

In the long term you will probably end up paying for a better fence, the trees won't grow new branches and filling in the gaps with shrubs will be difficult. Tempting though the legal route is, lawyers are expensive and do you need the extra stress?

Is there room to plant a second hedge further in on your land? Laylandii grow very fast.

And yes you have every right to be furious. I don't think I would take it out on the children- keep the moral high ground as it were.

Finally, make sure your other neighbours know what is going on, if they are "on side" they could keep you informed.

Sounds like they are trying to make their property look bigger by being able to see/go through to yours.

Have you seen the selling information, to make sure they are not implying your land is actually theirs.

Photo of pencil drawing will do Op

The more primitive a MN diagram the easier to read

Have a good day throw any mouldy bits well over the now pseudo 'boundary'

Don’t punish the children for the faults of the parent. It would be unfair to both their dd and your dd.

crabb I know. But look at the alternatives.

Here you have to declare when selling your house that there is a dispute with a neighbor. If that is the case where you are, I'd point out that you don't want to sue as you know that will make it more difficult for them to sell, but you will if necessary.

It is precisely because you aren't there all the time that you need to have a secure boundary up.

Surely people aren't really this wankery???

Put up a large sign against the opposite side boundary so that its far away from their garden but very visible from it "This ground is the garden of Number xxx, private property, access strictly prohibited."

Surely the orange plastic fencing is cheap enough to not use up too much profit.

Electric fences must be cheap(?). A car battery and some thin wire and it definitely sends a message to potential buyers that your outgoing neighbours won't be keen on.

little next door girl just came knocking, looking to play in the garden(s) after school. Luckily DD was legitimately with daddy on the farm, and not available. More excited talk from both girls about the sleepover.

Oh OP, you can't bring them into this

I liked the idea a PP had of shrubs / hedging to fill in the gaps. Would that work? You'd have to buy grown up ones which would be expensive, but it sounds like the best way to regain what you've lost.

I even more like the idea of first putting up a hideous metal fence with FUCK OFF / BEWARE OF THE DOG / DON'T TOUCH OUR PROPERTY AGAIN CUNTS signs, which you then beautifully shield from your side with said shrubs...

Do not send your child to their house! Chances are she will either overhear something that'll upset her or they will say something cruel to her about you