To think my neighbours have no boundaries!

[BornIn1995]

I want to see if I’m just being cynical or whether people would too get annoyed by this.

Moved to a new house last year, and have just had my first child. Neighbours were very friendly, and are all older than us (we’re 30s - they’re all late 40s - 60s.

We are renovating currently but obviously delayed due to baby’s arrival. And with this in mind we also don’t have much surplus cash at the moment as I am on Mat leave.

To set the scene: The garden fences are currently pretty low so you can see across everyone’s gardens.

When I am out in the garden the neighbours call across to me. And it drives me mad. They’re lovely people and very friendly - but it’s my private garden and I am out there with my baby. Not for a neighbourhood chat. If I wanted to chat I’d stand at the front of the house.

It’s not just one neighbour either - they all do it! I find it so intrusive! I just wouldn’t dream of doing it to someone else. I even had it the other day where I didn’t answer and they kept shouting “can you hear me?”.

We are just planning to get the fences re done so we have more privacy - but obviously this takes time and money.

AIBU to think that it’s annoying and seriously lacks boundaries?

It’s so difficult as I don’t want to say something and then create some awkward tension.

Anyone else had a scenario like this?

In the 20th century, right up until the late 1970’s, everyone had low garden fences and people tended to stay put in neighbourhoods and friends with their neighbours. Part of that was down to the Social Contracts in place - people generally felt closer to their neighbours and chatting across gardens was something that maintained a sense of community: the neighbours had each other’s backs.
From the 1980’s, privacy became more important to people who also didn’t want to engage with neighbours, so higher fences became the norm. The result of this meant that lots of people living in a new neighbourhood never spoke to their neighbours, and additionally, became so precious about their privacy that the incidence of neighbourly disputes soared, breaking the Social Contract norms, and turning whole streets into a series of fortified, private houses, where nobody even knew the person next door, let alone anyone else in the street.
The downside of this is the breakdown of the Social Contract: someone breaking into a house while the owners are out? Not my business! Someone needs some help with shopping/moving something heavy/a friendly chat? Not my problem!
OP you don’t know how lucky you are! Please don’t fortify and isolate yourself from your neighbours - instead learn how to tactfully close conversations when you don’t have time to chat, but try to make the effort to get to know them and you’ll feel so much more like part of the community!

You poor thing!!! This is so intrusive no wonder you need a rant! Some people have absolutely no social awareness (or indeed do, and don’t care as their desire to be nosy trumps their pride).

I just think our homes are the one place in life we can have peace away from the chaos of the world. And we should be able to do it in private :-)

This would drive me absolutely nuts. No wonder you need to get it out!!! Really feel for you as I just absolutely hate situations like this.

They are awkward, uncomfortable and we shouldn’t have to deal with them from our own home.

Is there any way you can implement any of the suggestions on this thread? X

Honestly cannot for the life of me understand how so many people on mumsnet are offended by people trying to be friendly

Being friendly and saying hello to people is completely different to someone standing there for 40 minutes talking and just keep talking to you.

@AlisonDonut yeah how rude of a neighbour to initiate a conversation that OP made no attempt to end. Talking to our neighbours what next???

Talking is fine as explained. But they just stand there talking at you. It is impossible to just pick them up and move them like chess pieces. I'm not sure what you are getting at. When you have for example, an hours lunch break and are working at home, and have been on calls all day, and you go into your own garden for 20 mins, the last thing you want is a neighbour telling you for the umteenth time about a bee blog he has written.

You bought a house with sociable fencing, the previous owner was probably happy to chat to their neighbours in this fashion. We bought our houses with sociable fencing - generally means you are on for a winner neighbours wise!

we chat to our new neighbours but probably only once a week, the kids are in the garden loads, my kids are super sociable so I’ve had to remind them if they don’t reply on the first call of their name they are busy and leave them be. I hate modern developments with the 6ft fencing round tiny gardens I find them so claustrophobic! If they had sociable fencing they would probably get on much better with their neighbours and have less neighbour disputes played out on Facebook!

can you make a portion of your garden secluded to give you a private space to sit quietly out of sight.

@AlisonDonut so as a grown up say something along the lines of
Sorry neighbour I'm flat out with work today and have twenty minutes for a bit of quiet can you tell me about it when I'm less busy.

Make putting up a bigger fence a priority!!

I did, but the problem is they don't listen.

The whole point of this thread is people just don't read the room, a bit like your good self it seems.

Also, once you know a man has written a blog, you don't need to hear about it every day.

A garden is an extension of your home. It may be the outdoor part but it's still your property.
If the OP would like privacy in her own garden and not have neighbours seeing what she is doing the whole time she is entitled to that.
It's nothing to do with being antisocial

@clpsmum it’s an anonymous forum that is heavily populated with introverts and people with social anxiety. Having been here for a while now these are recurring themes. I’m on here quite a bit because I am retired and have some health issues so have too much free time these days.

The poster admits to being anxious and having some communication issues. I chat to my neighbours but I’m aware the young couple next door both work FT so when I do bump in to them, like this week I only ever chat for a couple of minutes. Seems like communication issues both sides of the low fence.

I would make a seating area and put up Bamboo screening these are cheap compared to a new fence, you just need some fence posts. My garden is actually private but I have made a little corner sanctuary that means we are completely unseen from even neighbours upstairs windows. This pic is one corner.

I would hate this so much OP, you have my sympathy. I do't think those boundaries are easy to manage and maintain good relationships. I've not be in your situaiton, but in my last place it was a row of tightly tereaced houses with tiny gardens. Everyone knew when anyone was in their garden and, if nothing else, anyone could be seen from upper story windows. Thankfully we never did little more than say hi, one neighbour and I were close enough to chat if we were both having an evening cigarette in the winter when the hedge dropped it's leaves. But I basically stopped using the garden, it was nothing more to me than a nice frame of plants and flowers to be viewed from the kitchen/sitting room.

If all the fences are low there may be restrictive covenants on the land to stop residents making them higher. It's your boundaries that you need to work on, in that it's find just acknowledging them with a smile, and then carrying on with your garden, book, playing with child or whatever.

I hate this, it's why it was the first thing we did. Literally they would all come out every time we went out there!! It was a nightmare, it's a private garden, sometimes I just wanna be in pajamas and spend time alone with my kids. Even when we put the fence up I remember one neighbour would still come out every time and just potter about. It made us not use the garden much until they moved and finally no one bothers us. Some people lack boundaries so much.

I live in a similar set up with toddler and all my neighbours are nearly pension age. They behave like this too and I’ve told a few of them how I feel now I’ve been labelled as ‘strange’.
you can add some screening to the low fences that’ll definitely send out a message you don’t want to be disturbed

So why did people in the 1980s begin to fortify their gardens with high fences if they had hitherto been such good friends with their neighbours over their low fences and it was such Utopia? Could it be that they found it stressful and wearing to never feel private, to never be able to fully relax in their gardens, knowing that any neighbour could see them, choose to talk to them, whether they felt like doing so or not?

And high fences and hedges have taken off, so there must have been a keen desire for this privacy, and now it’s an expected norm. I’d hate low fences and I really don’t need to know the ins or outs of my neighbours’ lives. I have local friends through my activities that I can call on. Barely knowing your neighbours isn’t a terrible thing.

I was brought up in a small country village where gossip about the neighbours was rife (ooops, not such Utopia then) and one neighbour was in and out of my mum’s house all the time. She loved it when she moved to a more anonymous town.

I do think the best solution for the OP is to create private spaces within the garden, as pps have described. But I am in full sympathy!

I absolutely feel your pain, gardens are a extension of your house and should be private, you wouldn’t expect people to wander in to your home a start a conversation!
We moved to a new house last year with a lovely garden. Neighbours to the right have a 4ft fence with trellis on top, right next to our outdoor seating area. They are older and retired, and she is quite passive aggressive. (ie will say, “oh isn’t that bay tree getting enormous?” instead of, “would you mind cutting that bay tree please, it’s starting to block my path!” etc etc.) She also seems to desperately need to deal with the garden only when we are out there, but won’t converse with us at all through the fence (not that we’d want to!)
A few weeks ago she was in her garden. We were measuring up against the fence to see how tall a large umbrella would be. Didn’t think much more of it until he collared DH the next day to say he’d seen us measuring the fence and he didn’t want to replace it with anything taller that would block out their light!!! DH said that we didn’t have any current plans for new fences etc but we’d discuss anything with them before we proceeded (bearing in mind that we can add anything to our own garden within reason.)
Next thing we know, he has posted a TYPED letter through the door, setting out his expectations of what a new fence should consist of and saying he will sketch some ideas!!! He’d made bullet points and everything. And all because of a fucking tape measure. I mean, seriously?!
If that hasn’t proved we need more privacy, then I don’t know what will.

@Abracadabra12345
I expect it's because the 1980s is when people started to have more leisure time, shorter working week etc. So they started to treat the garden as a place of relaxation, eating in, having friends round which most of want privacy for.

I had this situation with NDN at previous home. She was an elderly spinster who spent much of her free time gardening, and was obviously lonely and lacking social skills. She would talk at me and take no normal cues that I wanted to get on with my day or enjoy my garden quietly. I couldn't even leave my windows or back door open and she would start shouting through to me. She would also monitor my working patterns (shift worker) and my other coming and goings, and report back to me, it was quite intrusive and unsettling particularly as I'm a very private person at home. My home is my sanctuary.

Part of the reason I bought that house was for the garden, I love gardening, but because of her I gave up on it and let it get overgrown.

There is definitely a difference between friendly neighbourliness and feeling like you are being stalked, which can be hard to explain to anyone who hasn't experienced it.

We have a similar situation on one side. I have normal six foot fences on the side with the neighbours I'm not so keen on, thankfully! It's only 5 foot along the other side, and it's 5 foot on the other side of their garden, so I can see across two gardens. Our gardens are also sloped so I feel very overlooked when I'm standing at the highest part.

When we first moved in the neighbour mentioned how nice it is to have low fences so you can chat. I was a bit concerned by that. Over the years we have had chats with them when we're out there and they've never been intrusive. I can always dash off if I need to. I do really disliked the feeling of being exposed (even though they're rarely in their garden these days) so I'm growing some bigger shrubs. I've got a buddleia which is fast growing so should provide some privacy fairly quickly. I'm also going to attach a trellis and grow a fast growing clematis. On the other side I'm going to put some bamboo in half barrels. I think that's much cheaper than replacing the fencing and less offensive and obvious that I want to block them out.

Your neighbors sound wonderful.

You should lighten up & chat to them, especially for the sake of your baby.

From errant packages to emergency help a nearby friend or neighbor is a godsend.

Your child will grow up around them & they will keep an eye out, ensuring your little is always safe.

This would annoy me. The general chit chat is fine and polite but all the time would be a big NO for me. Your back garden is an extension of your house and should be private. Plus I tend to look like a big bag of shit when chilling in the garden so I absolutely would hate neighbours constantly catching me when I do not look socially ready at all.. I’m talking being in my pjs with my cellulite on show and no bra as this is me at my most relaxed! 😳Leave me alone!

I think it’s perfectly reasonably to not want to bothered and to higher the fence. Maybe you just need to not come across as warm as maybe you are 😂

yanbu. I have very friendly relations with both of my neighbours and also 6 foot fences. I couldn't cope with having neighbours being able to see into my garden and expect to chat.