Neighbours never cut their grass.

[Shootingstar1115]

When I say never, I mean never. It’s a jungle out there. They are busy working people, I understand it’s hard to keep on top. We aren’t keen gardeners ourselves but manage to cut the grass and keep it looking half presentable.

They don’t maintain their garden at all. It’s causing all sorts of plants and brambles to grow through the fence into our garden which we can trim to a certain extent but both my kids have scatched themselves and recently our dog had a nipple injury - large scratch/cut after coming in from the garden. Obviously we don’t know for sure it’s that but she often jumps up to the fence if she hears other dogs/people/cats nearby (not that she can see them 🤣) and it seems likely she injured herself that way.

My kids have also accidentally chucked balls over there but you can’t see them to find them so we’ve just left them in there for now 🤣

I feel like helping them out with it but it will be a large job and myself and Oh lack the time nor are we keen gardeners ourselves.

Would you be annoyed??

My house is up for sale and every potential buyer has expressed concern about my neXT door neighbours house and Garden. He's a fireman but his house looks like a drug den and the overgrown plants bramble and bindweed constantly spill over the fence. I had to replace his fence myself as the old one kept falling into my garden and he wouldon't o anything about it.I'm pissed off. I've worked really hard ton make my place nice.

If you look at the images trixie posted no one is sitting out looking st that and looking at wildlife. All that's in there is vermin. And even that you wouldn't see.

My garden is well kept. I got up this morning and watched two deer eating in the border. We have blue tits nesting in one of the house beams and also in a bird box. Starlings nesting in the garage. Pigeons nesting in one of the hedges.On any given day there is at least a dozen pheasants wandering round. There is more squirrels than I can count, and a sprinkling of rabbits, there are ducks on the steam. There are wood bees living in a beam of the house too, the list is endless. Often we see a fox wandering through. There is dragon flies and butterflies. It's a big garden, but it's maintained and the wildlife is plentiful.

Not one of these animals or insects seems put off by the fact rhe garden is maintained. Pretending you need to let your garden become some over grown mess full of brambles and weeds to attract "wild life" is beyond laughable.

No one believes it so people need to stop spouting it. We all know it's nonsense, seriously we do.🤣

PLEASE don’t use Roundup. Not only is it terrible for the environment it is also strongly linked to cancer in humans. It’s terrible stuff and really shouldn’t be sold.

Realistically if you want to avoid possibly offending your neighbours you will need to just snip things you don’t want as they creep through to your side.

But really this type of garden beats plastic grass, fully paved or a perfect square cut lawn any day.

@Tavannach

How very bold of them. At central London prices! Can you tell us what you said to them?

I did not really say anything. Just raised my eyebrow and that was the end of the conversation. I’m a lot softer than people think but give good ‘resting bitch face’…

We got the whole property at a very low price because it was a ruin, after being empty and boarded up for decades. We lived in a caravan onsite for over 20 months and did almost all of the work ourselves. So, we actually improved the overall curb appeal for neighbouring properties. We did hack away brambles and removed a lot of building rubble but we did not opt for the usual super neat look.

My neighbours never go in their garden. It is a sea of brambles and stinging nettles.
It is also an utter haven for wildlife.
And it means that I don’t need to worry about them having loud barbecues until stupid o’clock.

No, I wouldn't give a toss. If I noticed, which isn't so likely.

Where do the posters saying how ‘laughable’ it is that wildlife needs wild, unkempt gardens get their expertise. Different creatures need different habitats. Some will thrive in tidy gardens with a plenty of flowers and nest boxes, but others need long grass and the protection/shelter of things like brambles and ‘overgrown’. Some well-tended gardens have little to attract wildlife.

RSPB for example says uncut long grass is an ‘important habitat for all sorts of insects and minibeasts, not to mention a feasting ground for the hungry birds which feed on them.’

My neighbour with the wild garden has seen hedgehogs, grass snakes, slow worms, lots of different birds and insects. My garden is a lot tidier and I get less wildlife - I still have nest boxes, bird feeders, pond, etc which do attract birds, frogs, dragonflies, etc. Any gardening for wildlife is good, and some creatures need clear ground and short grass (I think some species of bee for example), but it’s incorrect to suggest that wildlife thrives equally well in a tidy garden as in an ‘overgrown’ one.

Hmm I’m on the fence

I had neighbours once who wouldn’t cut their hedges and even though I trimmed my side, their side grew so high there were birds peeking through DD’s bedroom window!

I told them I’d seen a rat once and they cut them😁

Bluntness I imagine you live in the country side surrounded by natural habitat for such creatures.

Most of us may not have that luxury - completely different in suburbia with its row upon row of neat fenced off gardens.

Your garden does sound lovely, though.

It would annoy me too, OP, it creates extra work for you and if it's visible it can be an eyesore (plus you don't get the benefit of having nice gardens around, which can really make a neighbourhood nice to be in). But I doubt they'd take you up on the offer to find someone to sort it out so I think you need to suck it up and concentrate on other things.

On a Pollyanna note, we had neighbouring gardens like that when I was a kid and it was quite a lot of fun to sneak into them - wild adventure land!

I can imagine many people on this thread spending most of their free time peering out from behind the curtains and tutting very loudly at their neighbour’s lawn. Then muttering to themselves about how untidy people are etc etc

Pretending you need to let your garden become some over grown mess full of brambles and weeds to attract "wild life" is beyond laughable. You don't need to let your garden be full of brambles and weeds for wildlife, but brambles are excellent for bees, and "weeds" are usually native flowers supporting invertebrates. Just because it's unsightly doesn't mean it's bad for wildlife.

Many people would regard your pigeons as vermin.

My NDN front garden is a complete and utter mess. I am not going to lie, it annoys me. I have a beautiful home that I have taken care of. I try to maintain the front of my house.
Every time I come home from work and see the overgrown grass and the mess, I am irritated.
My neighbours may or may not have a good reason for leaving their garden like this, but it still irks .
I definitely wouldn’t want to buy a home next to an individual with an overgrown garden. It is just not aesthetically pleasing

Yes I do liv in the country side you're right. But I haven't always and years ago I lived beside a busy a road and I still maintained by garden and still Had wild life.

You don't need brambles to attract bees, nor do you need weeds. The point is you can have a maintained garden not over run by weeds or brambles that wildlife still love. It's simply daft to suggest you need to let your garden become an over grown mess to attract them. It's beyond ludicrous.

I do have brambles and of course there is weeds, but that's not where rhe bees go, they are in the flowers, just like the butterflies.

There is no reason to let your garden become a mess unless that's what you wish, but pretending its a brambley weedy over grown mess for the wildlife is just daft.

I couldn't get excited by unmown grass, but then I think the obsession with a manicured lawn is some weird lower-middle-class obsession, like washing your car or having LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE stencilled on your kitchen wall.

We're considered dangerous radicals in the village because we have daisies in ours and don't consider them an eyesore.

Dangerous radicals, 🤣

I love the daisies and the butter cups. Dandelions not so much, But that's a whole different thing to what the op is talking about or the picture trixie posted.

How rude that people assume it's because you're scruffy.

My back garden was like this before we moved into adapted housing. I became disabled and DH was working full time and caring for me. He has severe back problems and could no way mow a huge lawn, and didn't have time anyway between all the working, cooking, cleaning, school runs, caring.

We absolutely could not have afforded to pay a gardener going down to one minimum wage income.

Our home was beautiful inside. Clean and tidy, well decorated and our pride and joy. We were clean and so was our child, car etc. It was literally just the grass that was long, and it was some type of meadow grass so would grow two feet in a fortnight, even if he did cut it.

People are so sodding judgy. We were great neighbours, friendly, very quiet and normal nice people. Absolutely pathetic that long grass would make people assume we were scruffy, lazy or bad neighbours.

I swear, Bluntness -- we live in the village of the Stepford Lawn. I suspect the parish council does secret before-dawn anti-daisy reconnaissance circuits with a hoe.

@SnowyAlpsandPeaks

"At the moment my grass is coming up to knee hight. It rains, it stops, we say give it a few days and the grass will be dry enough to cut, and it rains. I wish we’d just have a week of dry weather! My ds14 is itching to get out there with the lawn mower, so it’s not because we can’t be bothered"
What? You have a lawnmower that will cut grass up to your knees? Are you a little person?

I would LOVE it if my neighbours cut mine back (mine is a serious jungle and they’ve just complained about it to our landlord!). We work full time and never use the garden so it just kind of got away from us, and I have no idea where to start with cutting it back!

Lol people are so obsessed with appearances.

OP maybe your neighbours are growing a self-sustaining jungle garden? Different layers, shrubs, bushes, climbers, trees, fruits and vegetables galore!

I don't know why people who don't want to bother with their gardens don't just live in a flat with a balcony/terrace instead. Why leave them as an eyesore for everyone else?

I'd be going to speak to them about certain 'weeds', and asking to collect them. Many weeds are far more nutritious than half the shite we put into our bodies (bar truly organic foods). Take dandelion for instance. Use the roots for a more nutritious coffee substitute. The leaves can be used in salads and practically every part of the dandelion can be used.

Another 'weed' are nettles. An incredibly nutritious plant that is very versatile. Can be used in soups, teas, wine etc.

So a bit of research on these weeds will have you educated on vegetation that is plentiful and, providing glyphosate (the active component in Round-Up that has been found to cause various cancers) hasn't been used on them, are very much what nature intended for us.

Whenever I go camping, I don't bring anything else other than the tent (sometimes I just build a shelter out of whatever is there), a pot (for cooking and sterilising water) and a multitool. I live off the fat of the land and thoroughly enjoy myself, with hunting, eating the vegetation, and using the vegetation for thing like pain relief and other medicinal purposes.

I don't know why people who don't want to bother with their gardens don't just live in a flat with a balcony/terrace instead

Because my wheelchair won't go up stairs.

Because I have PTSD and can't use lifts.

Because I don't want to live in a flat.

HTH.

I have the most amazing (to me) poppy field in my front garden..I have heard the neighbours bitching about them.

Next door's is up for sale and we have been waiting for her to come and ask us to tidy it up