I sort of know IABU, but would this bother you? Neighbours always in the garden.

[Newhomeandgarden]

DP and I bought and moved into our new house about 3 months ago. The garden was a big feature for us. The problem is that our next door neighbours clearly think so too - they’re always out in theirs and I mean always. The husband works from a home office at the bottom of the garden, the wife often brings her laptop out and works at the garden table, or else doing yoga on the grass or just sits there reading with a drink. It just makes me feel like they’re always just right there, lurking, and I feel really self-conscious when I sit in our garden and especially if DP and I have a conversation out there that they’re listening in on it. DP doesn’t want to rock the boat because they aren’t noisy or antisocial as such and we moved to get away from nightmare neighbours, but I’m just devastated that it looks like we’re going to end up in the same situation in what was meant to be our fresh start.

I know I can’t exactly ask them not to use their garden, but it just feels so unfair that I can’t relax in my own home because it’s like living next to a public park!

I would make friends with them- at least enough to say “hiya another sunny day- aren’t we lucky. Your hydrangea is beautiful.” That way there’s no awkwardness.

Re them hearing a convo between you and your husband yes they will hear but if it’s whether to have burger or pasta for tea they aren’t going to care much. If you talk about which gimp mask he is wearing this evening their ears might prick up somewhat! 😂😂 So make sure you’re inside before you start talking about hookers and cocaine.

As long as you are talking at a reasonable volume your neighbours won’t hear you anyway. I was reading in my garden yesterday and my height was chatting to her daughter. I could hear the talking but not what they were actually saying. (I wasn’t trying to listen it just made me think of this thread). On just be friendly with your neighbours, it makes life easier.

You could also create a small screen with a bamboo frame and climbing plants in your garden and put a deckchair behind that. Would look pretty and you can relax a bit more.

I completely understand how you feel. 🥰 Yeah it sounds a bit daft, but it might just be that you feel a bit self conscious. My husband (sensitive type) prefers gardening when the neighbours are away, but he’s getting over it now. Neither you or your neighbours are in the wrong. Don’t worry, it’s all good. Enjoy your garden. 🥰 It’ll be ok, give it a little time. xx 😊

An unspoken code about not going into your own garden when your neighbours are eating lunch outside has given me the biggest laugh of my weekend so far! What planet are you on OP?!

God forbid that anyone should sit in their own garden having a drink and reading.

With kindness, this is a you problem, not a them problem.

We are in a terrace so gardens are joined. We are absolutely not "friends" with our neighbours, but we are polite and friendly and engage in a few minutes small talk if we are in the garden at the same time, or getting the bins in or whatever.

When our electric meter caught fire and we were without electricity for 48 hours, that neighbourly small talk turned into "you're welcome to pop over and use our shower" from one side and "do you need to use my oven to make dinner" from the other. When we unexpectedly ended up stuck on the motorway for hours, we were able to contact our neighbour and ask her to open the back door for the dog. When she ended up stuck in hospital with her disabled daughter, she called us to ask us to pop in and feed her dogs. Etc. Etc. Etc.

You don't have to be best mates, but being politely friendly isn't a bad idea.

This is such a depressing attitude

I thought I’d read the most absurd, entitled & frankly crazy complaints about neighbours but you win the award OP…what on earth is wrong with you to have a problem with people using & enjoying their own personal space. Disbelief

This is ridiculous. If you can't enjoy your garden because your neighbours are doing likewise it's entirely your problem. You can't really be contemplating mentioning anything to them?

I think OP is just very very self conscious. But this is life in close proximity to others, you just have to learn superficial politeness and to ignore what others are doing. Screen fencing so you can't see more than outlines moving about, and spend more time (not less) outside. Habituation will help. Try building something elaborate outside, or painting the shed - after a few loud disagreements with your OH, you soon won't care about the neighbours at all.

Like a PP, having cordial relations can be very useful (I feed my neighbour's cats when she's away, and we are both single women so we kind of support each other by WhatsApp if there's a scary storm or something). Having lived in a detached house with no neighbours at all, I can say that I infinitely prefer having someone living alongside me.

This is not real, surely?
i think you are the nightmare neighbours here!!

I hate to break it to you but a detached house doesn't mean a detached (as in a gap between you) garden!

We live in a detached house. Our garden is just separated by a fence from both our neighbours (also both detached houses). That's the norm for detached houses - you don't have land in between!

Which means we can hear them whenever we're in the garden or have the windows open. We have a retired couple one side and a young family on the other. The side that has the retired couple just has a wire netting fence for the lower part of the garden as we have open countryside behind us so it allows us to all enjoy those views across each others gardens.

But we have a privacy fence (6 foot high) near the patio which has always been there and they've always had their shed at the end of that. So you'd physically have to go to the middle of the garden and lean in to see either patio. The younger family bought off of dog owners so they have high fences.

You could do something like putting in a shed or similar to block their view of your seating area if that's the issue. Or, as others have said, just say something like you had clematis etc in your last garden so you're installing higher fences to grow some up without it coming over into their garden. You can't grow clematis or honeysuckle on low fences. Plus it'll look and smell lovely!

But the point is, we can still hear hear our neighbours if they are in their garden and they can hear us. Over Easter we had family over and enjoyed sitting on the patio chatting. We heard the younger family's kids squealing and giggling and the murmur of voices one side - it was lovely to hear the kids having fun. Our retired neighbours had friends over and we heard plates clattering so we assume they enjoyed lunch on their patio too. It was Easter, it was sunny and we all had time off so why on earth would we ask permission to use our own gardens?

As to this thing about hearing your conversations with your DH - are you using a megaphone? We can only catch murmurs and laughter. I have no idea what they're actually saying.

You don't have to be super friendly with your neighbours. But having a chat is useful, we all know when the neighbours are away and will keep an eye on the house for example. Just be polite and for goodness sake enjoy your garden!

I’ve asked DP to start looking into putting up a bigger fence on our side but I also worry that’s going to make them think we’re snobby and turn against us.

Why? You can just say you want to grow some climbing plants which would tumble over the current low fence or you're thinking of getting a pet something or other which needs to be secure in the garden. You are making very heavy weather of this. I'm starting to feel sorry for your new neighbours now especially given you said the thing about the unwritten rule over garden use was a thing before you even lived next door to the "neighbours from hell". Please go and get some counselling. There is nothing wrong with wanting to keep to yourselves and not socialise with neighbours but assigning weird intents to them is bizarre.

Hi there - we had awful neighbours in our last house, also semi detached and they have hot tub parties during lockdown , were drunk regularly, shouting at 4am when the whole road had all of their windows open when it was super hot, everyone heard it but nobody could say anything as they were the type of people that would do it more if you know what I mean , so I completely understand that you feel you want some privacy - on your side I would suggest some bamboo plants in troughs - my sister did this and they grow quite tall and quickly so you can create some kind of barrier so you feel you have more privacy when outside. We had a bad 4 years with our old neighbours and moved to a detached in the end so I completely understand how you feel with not having some privacy. A taller fence would be ideal and maybe just say we are going to replace the fence on both sides hope you don't mind, lots of people do that and don’t mind if they’re not paying for it … our neighbours behind have done just that and it’s our fence not theirs….

OP, we have lived in our semi detached house for 38 years. The attached house has had nine different owners since we first moved here. Some have been very quiet in their gardens but others have not.

Over the years, we've had neighbours with a dog that yapped continuously every time we went into our back garden and the current owners have a large dog that barks loudly and hurls itself at the fences on both sides when it hears people in the gardens. We've had a neighbour who bred rabbits which would thump against the sides of their hutches during the night. They also had a chicken coop and two cockerels that would wake us up at 4.30 in the morning.

We've had boys kicking footballs repeatedly against our fence. We've had a couple of broken panes of glass in the greenhouse. We've had neighbours self-building an extension for two years and others that did a loft conversion over two years and spends weekends doing DIY and noisy work like cutting ceramic tiles in the garden. We've had wind chimes placed next to our fence and a BBQ placed right next to our fence which would blow smoke into our dining room windows on the hottest days of the year, when you don't want your windows closed.

We've had kids screaming on trampolines. For two years running we had two girls screaming and squealing at the top of their voices for hours while jumping into a plastic swimming pool (the neighbours the other side did complain about the level and duration of squealing). Their mother would use a net every morning before 7am to take leaves out of the swimming pool and empty the net by banging the metal handle repeatedly against the metal supports of the pool every morning during the summer holidays.

For years there have been screaming arguments between the girls and their father and we can hear them having rows inside the house when we are outside because they have full length sliding doors across their extension which are often open. The woman often works from home and we can clearly hear her on company related Zoom calls. Even if this was a detached house, because our garden is not large, we would still be able to hear them. There is a 2 metre fence between us and them so we can't actually see them but we are very aware of them, especially during the spring and summer.

If your neighbours work quietly in a garden office or sit outside reading or doing yoga I'd be very happy to have them as neighbours.

You need to remove the stick from your arse pronto. Bloody hell love.

I agree - OP mentioned a previous neighbour who wouldn’t go out of another neighbour was in theory garden? That is odd.

Me and my family use our garden as we like and others do the same.

A ‘nightmare’ neighbour would be someone who played loud music all day and night, had bonfires constantly, or hid from neighbours ha

This is always going to be a problem. We have new neighbours who are very nice to us, but are always out over the fence with boom boom music and loud voices. I like to sit and read, so am driven indoors. Nothing to be done in these situations unless you want to have an enemy next door.

No, I disagree.

It’s really rather simple.

What has changed, socially in the UK, in the last 50-odd years? Let me list some:

Immigration with its impact on social cohesion.
Movement within the UK (the decline of the nuclear family)
Small dwellings in close proximity - often with poor insulation
The rise of technology = noise and people less aware of their impact on others.
More people living alone (ageing demographic and young people choosing/not be able to start a family)
Higher turnover/transition of property, given less job security/tenure.
A decline more broadly in social standards with a more prevalent ‘f-you’ mentality.

You see where I am going with this.

I stand by my post.

An unspoken rule that you don’t go in your gardens if you hear another neighbour is already out, is absolutely mad

just get on with your life and leave them to it

You may be extra sensitised to any potential issues, given your past experience. Most people are nice - there's no reason your new neighbours will be like your old neighbours - in fact they're probably really hoping and worrying that you'll be nice! I think invite them over for a cup of tea and ultimately put up some tall plants/climbers on your side (not attached to their fence) that go at least half of the way down your garden so you feel more private. You could buy a pleached tree or two if you're able to splash out - or get something like a trachelospermum which smells nice and is evergreen... I would try not to be wound up by the potential shared alley issue - it doesn't really matter as much as you building a good relationship with neighbours and leaving the stress of your past experiences behind.

Put up a higher fence

One of our neighbours gardens is a mess. It's filled and I mean filled with machinery and wooden logs for his log burner ( and the rest of the towns logburners) by the amount of logs in the garden, so we are going to put up a 6ft fence rather than the 4ft that's there already. I don't give a shit what he thinks, I'll tell him the truth if he asks me!

To be fair my neighbours and I sort of have this arrangement. The small new build gardens are just 2 sunbeds wide and 4 long. So even with a high fences you can hear everything even people chewing.
If everyone is out it's not very relaxing.
If the people next door have people round chatting I'll go in because it does make people self conscious.
It's fine if we are quietly pottering or sunbathing obviously.