Ivygate

[housinghero]

Can you tell me it am being unreasonable please

My next door neighbour is in her 70’s and lives on her own. She has an obsession with the ivy that I am growing up the back of the house and over my pergola. She has asked me and I have cut it back so that it is not growing on her side of the house . A few weeks ago I caught her hanging out if her bedroom window with a saw trying to hack it off . So I cut it at the bottom again so that it would then die back but only on the stems that were nearest to her side so that some still grew. Since we have been on holiday she has either come round and cut it or leant over with her saw and cut all the stem so the whole lot has died . So I am left with dead leaves all up my house which I can’t get down because I can’t get on a step ladder from my side and I also have spinal arthritis: I am fuming. I don’t plan on a neighbour dispute over this but after a horrendous week of family suicide and ill health his is the last thing I need.

If your husband is a builder presumably he’s quite strong so couldn’t he pull down the dead bits?
I know it’s annoying as our neighbours sprayed weed killer on ivy growing on our fence. However I doubt it’s killed it off, ivy can survive some pretty bad treatment.

Probably was - and I don’t mean it - just angry

Because that one sentence is indicative of your real attitude towards your neighbour.

Feed it. Water it.

It'll grow back with extra vigour, using the old stems as a framework to grab hold of.

IME it won;t take long to be a fresh new clump, twice the size of the original.

I hate ivy growing up houses and it's so rampant that before you know it, it's everywhere.

I lived in a house some years ago that had a beautiful white wall at the bottom of the garden and the neighbour the other side of the wall had ivy on his side that used to grow over the top and hang down.

He was very elderly but he loved his ivy!

Our garden was modern looking and the ivy looked dreadful coming down over the top so we sprayed it with weed killer and it died back but only as far as the top so that the whole thing wasn't killed off.

The old boy wasn't interested in cutting it back and we found spraying it was more effective than cutting it which only seemed to make it grow more.

I guess the lady next door to you was fearful about it's rampant spreading habit and has already asked you about it but didn't feel you had done enough to control it.

She shouldn't have done it but ivy is really bad for brickwork - we've just removed loads from a garden wall in our new house (luckily it hadn't reached the actual house), and it's taken a lot of brick and grout with it, and the stems/trunks have grown into the wall.

You should never have allowed any of it to grow onto her side in the first place, but since you did, I don’t think you can complain that she’s had to solve her problem herself.

The OP has said that the ivy was not on the neighbour’s side and that the neighbour had to hang out of her window and reach around to the OP’s side with a long saw to cut it. The neighbour killed the OP’s plant on the OP’s property.

How were you planning to maintain it if you can't get on a step ladder?

It was so obviously not a serious comment, though.

Hang on, OP has had a horrific family trauma in the last week, she's unwell herself and she's come home to find the neighbour she's bent over backwards to accommodate has destroyed her property and caused her hassle to deal with it.

Everyone on the thread knows full well that she doesn't sincerely wish harm upon the neighbour, it's the sort of unguarded hyperbolic comment you make when you're angry and under a lot of stress.

OP, I'd send her the bill for having it all removed and cleaned up. And probably the bill for the drainpipe at the same time. And have a very frank conversation with her about what is and is not acceptable.

I guess the lady next door to you was fearful about it's rampant spreading habit and has already asked you about it but didn't feel you had done enough to control it.

That's totally irrelevant though. It wasn't on the neighbour's property, so her feelings are hers to deal with. She doesn't get to damage OP's property because she's worried about what might happen, any more than I get to cut down my neighbour's trees because the leaf drop stops any grass from growing.

If your husband is a builder surely he can get it down?

Anyway of course she is being unreasonable and assuming she really did this, she is acting illegally. In slight mitigation, as other PPs have said, Ivy is damaging to brick work, and if your houses are attached, that could eventually impact on her.

If you sensibly don’t want a fight I would replant Virginia Creeper

OP isn't coming across as pleasant. Nor consistent.

One minute they came back from holiday and the ivy was dead, the next OP had actually seen the neighbour hanging out of the window.

Ivy spreads like the devil and is almost impossible to kill.

And if it gets rampant it can damage the brickwork, get into and damage guttering and will harbour lots of insects you may not necessarily want so close to your house.

We used to have some growing up the side of our house. We thought it looked nice for a while. The infestation of flying ants was the catalyst for us to get rid of it. By then it wa almost encroaching on the roof. It was a nightmare to remove. That was a few years ago now but it still keeps appearing and we regularly have to strip it off before it gets too far.

Maybe lady next door is worried this will happen and is staying vigilant to protect her property. Bit different to just taking a dislike to something in your garden

I won’t be taking it down above the pergola . She will have to look at the brown leave s it me, I will continue to do as I have before- let it grown and maintain its height and width. I won’t be planting anything else .
I won’t be sending bills for fencing or drainpipes and will continue to get my gardener to cut both sides of the front hedge even though I don’t have to .
I don’t have to lower myself to her standards but I would never dream of doing anything to others property as I have respect for others .
and I am am always disgusted when others don’t have equal respect.
I will not be engaging with her in the future but I will not be petty.

I think your reading comprehension may need some fine tuning.

A few weeks ago I caught her hanging out if her bedroom window with a saw trying to hack it off . So I cut it at the bottom again so that it would then die back but only on the stems that were nearest to her side so that some still grew. Since we have been on holiday she has either come round and cut it or leant over with her saw and cut all the stem so the whole lot has died.

Sequence:

1. A few weeks ago, OP saw her neighbour hanging out of the bedroom window hacking at the ivy.
2. To deal with the issue, she cut the ivy at the bottom, focusing on the stems growing towards the neighbour's side.
3. OP went away, and returned to find the neighbour had cut the whole stem.

It's neither a one off nor an issue the OP hasn't addressed.

As for not pleasant, I prefer to judge people on their actions, not solely on words that the OP allows she said in anger at a time of stress and grief.

So the OP can't use a step ladder to get it down because of arthritis, but husband is a builder so presumably he can get it down.

OP is lashing out at people who don't agree now.

That is a nasty thing to say. She’s an old lady who probably is over invested in this ivy because her world has shrunk and these things have started to matter more than they should,

This sums it up for me.

I can understand you're angry and upset, as you've taken steps to comply with her previous requests about the ivy, and she didn't have any right to take such drastic measures and she's fortunate you're not going to take any action against her for it.

I would have a gentle word with her about it at this point. Explain how she's upset you.

Unless your neighbour has dug up the root ball and done a sacrificial dance over the root ball, followed by a good dose of pesticide, the ivy isn’t dead. It’ll be noticeably growing in a couple of weeks and back up the house in a month, maybe 6 weeks. She was wrong to cut it but she hasn’t killed the ivy. Nothing kills ivy. She’s right to have concerns about ivy encroaching on to her property, the ivy is close to the boundary line in those photos and it does cause damage to the brickwork, as a builder I’d really hope your husband knew that. It doesn’t give her the right to access your property and I would say as such to her but keep the bloody ivy well within your property.

@JassyRadlett

Oh wow, I mean you are absolutely correct I missed the window past in the OP. Credit to you for such a comprehensive explanation of why and where I was wrong.

Yanbu op. She has no right to cut down your plants.

I would get a camera fitted tbh.

I was going to say she sounds a bit obsessive. It’s an old belief that ivy damages brickwork. My mother and grandmother went on about this back in the 60s/70s.
I’d write her a letter, polite but firm. Point out that damaging plants belonging to you is criminal damage and coming onto your property to damage anything is trespass. Any further damage will be reported to the police. Put up a few “ you are on CCTV” stickers on your windows. Worked immediately for a friend who had a problem with old b/f turning up at her house.
I’m sorry for your loss.

She was wrong to cut it but you're making a mistake to let ivy grow up the wall like that. It definitly will damage the brickwork and when you remove it it will leave those little bits behind that are impossible to get off. It grows like mad and there will be no way to control where it goes once it gets to a certain height - into the drainpipe and under the eves and over to her side etc.