To tell my neighbour to sod off next time she comments on my garden

[SoopriseSooprise]

My neighbour has a habit of popping her head over the fence and commenting on my garden. Nothing overly nasty, but I did say to her one time that I don't particularly enjoy gardening and she said "yeah, we can tell".

It's not a big garden but I work long hours and it's just not high on my priorities during the week. My neighbour is retired.

I had the week off this week and I've busted ass getting all the weeds up, driveway spotless, grass cut. I was feeling very pleased with myself.

Well today, a whole team of gardeners has shown up and are blitzing her garden while she's sitting drinking rosé and chatting with her friend!!!

WIBU to tell her to sod off next time she pops her head over and says "ooo your grass needs cut", because she doesn't even do her own bloody gardening!!!

This thread is lighthearted before anyone jumps in. I don't actually care whether she does her own garden or not! (I'm actually very jealous )

I know I’m missing the point of the thread but as someone who is also solely responsible for garden upkeep and has a full time job I can totally recommend a robot lawnmower. No more finding that hour or two on the not too hot not too wet already busy weekend.

Or electrified razor wire?

To be fair, assuming one was self employed and not tax dodging, that's cheap....

I have a neighbour like this - comments on our hedge A LOT. He's a twat. Thankfully quite a few other neighbours also think he's a twat.

We're the only house on the road with 2DC and both of us work full time. The garden is at the bottom of our to do list.

Tell her you have been doing some gardening on her advice, youre not sure about which plants but thought the japanese knotweed would look fantastic as a hedge in the front and you are planting bamboo all along the fence in the back and are planting it next week.

DDad started surreptitiously sorting out his neighbour’s garden because it was ‘annoying him’. Started subtly with the hedge, then progressed to sneaking over and cutting her grass while she was out. I told him he was being appalling and needed to stop, but he kept on doing it, getting bolder and bolder with the jobs he did.

Eventually I was passing and saw her, so I popped over to apologise for his terrible behaviour. She told me she was thrilled and to thank him! They are both very private people but they now occasionally chat and pass the time of day, which is lovely. DDad has a history of alienating neighbours, has no friends and is generally antisocial, so this development is surprising and makes me happy!

Not really relevant to your situation op, sorry for the tangent.

Next time she nose about ask her for the gardeners telephone and the rose brand because you saw her having a lovely day and you want to so it.
She wont comment on your garden anymore.

Just tell her you are rewilding because it’s better for the environment and Prince William himself told you that. Then don’t engage any longer.

We were similar, worked full time with long commutes and travel, at the same time as taking professional quals etc to better our careers and the garden was not a priority. It’s our property and our prerogative, our lack of gardening never encroached on their properties.

The neighbours who criticised and slagged us off about our garden are 25/30 years older than us and had more time because they worked fixed hours, locally, 5 days a week. Our aim was to pay our mortgage off in our forties which we did.

Subsequently we found out that the main neighbour who was gossiping and complaining about our garden is still paying a mortgage and it boils their blood that they still have to work in their seventies. We’ve now cut our hours and focus far less on work and more on our home.

We still have quite a wild garden, but it’s become very floral and kind of looks after itself with only a little help. It boils our moany neighbours blood even more that the kerb appeal we have is significantly better than theirs and we get stacks of compliments from visitors, delivery drivers etc. about how beautiful the front of our house and garden looks especially in Spring and Summer

Except I didn’t ask for a quote to do my garden. He interrupted my work day to tell me I wasn’t keeping on top of my garden ( lawn is mown, we have a small native hedgerow, forever fighting a battle with the weeds) and he would do it for that price..won’t approach my husband with any of his issues.. just likes to moan to me and then play it down when husband raises it!

This just reminded me of something - once upon a time a new neighbour moved into the street my family lived on, a few doors down. She appeared at our front door one day and asked if she could come in and look at our garden. My mum asked why and she said in her previous street she’d had the best garden so wanted to see what she was up against and was knocking on everyone’s doors. My mum said there wasn’t anything to see in ours (we’d not long got our dog who’d bitten the heads off/dug up every flower we had and had decided it wasn’t worth putting anything new in) but she insisted on looking. Not sure why my mum didn’t just tell her to sod off but think she was caught off guard and felt awkward, however my mum did say to her “all the neighbours on this stretch have been here years and we’ve never been a competitive bunch to be honest as we all get on well”.

Anyway she gets to the back garden just in time to see the dog in question run out onto the grass and do a turd in the dead centre 😂 she looked horrified, left without saying a word and then put her house up for sale again a few months later citing she was returning to her old street because she preferred the people there!

I think you and the rest of your street were well rid 😆 👏

For a start, tell her you want to give the pollinators a chance so you’re only cutting the grass once a month. As a PP suggested plant three-cornered leek and convolvulus up her sodding fence and tell her you’re rewilding.

I pay someone to do the heavy lifting in my tiny garden and even so it’s about three hours of my time a week to keep it looking reasonable. Not everyone has the time or energy.

for me "keep your fucking head out of my fucking garden" would manage the situation nicely.

Tell her the only type of gardening you’re interested in is ‘trimming your bush’..,that will shut her up 😁

I’d tell her to be careful. You know with the risk of falling from climbing on furniture and being elderly and all that.
I mean you’re clearly looking out for her and don’t want her to break a hip or something right?

Don't let people influence you, and certainly don't take notice, especially about gardens, because that is your land, your oasis, your ''lived in''. Gardens are special.

What did you do? You changed a wild garden, encouraging birds and bees and other small creatures to come in and make their homes. All those weeds your neighbour objects to are food for bees, if they flower; let them grow: if they don't, pull them up.

However, what you must not do is to allow your weeds to grow in your neighbour's garden. How you do that when bees go from flower to flower is difficult. A;so, search online for weeds that are not allowed to grow.

It is against the law to prune bushes and trees in the nesting season, usually April to end August, especially if you know birds are nesting in them.

Up to last year I spent a lot of money on wild bird food, seeds and fat balls and mealworms, having a delivery of live mealworms through the spring. It encouraged the birds on my wheelchair ramp and I watched them feeding their young. I could even go outside and they didn't fly away. The blackbirds loaded their beaks with mealworms, and brought their fledgelings down to show me. I miss them now.

Since the cost of living rose so highly this year, they have to help themselves from my running buffet of anything growing in the garden. Most of it is block paved so I can walk about when my legs work, and I have put stones on some beds in the front.

Keep your running buffet and ignore those who think a pristine garden is better, knowing that you are providing food for all sorts of creatures.

The climbing up on the bench would make me so mad 😡

@SoopriseSooprise

There are schemes that pair garden owners who can't or don't want to garden with frustrated gardeners who don't have a garden of their own. Sounds great in theory, no idea how well it working practice.
https://www.lendandtend.com/

Please do this 😂

Next time look him up and down in a contemptuous way and say ‘you really wouldn’t be up to it.’

yeah it would be a pity if you turned around suddenly and caught her in the face with a full on hosepipe....enough to make anybody fall off a bench.

This. Or a large parasol angled so that it completely blocks her view.

Your response should be 'I wouldn't like to pay a lot of money for such an inferior job!'.

My neighbour is exactly the same.

And when I did get a gardener last year she chatted his ear off and got him to do some of her trees as they were hanging over my garden and proclaimed herself marvelous for sorting that out for me.

So this year I've let it go to shit. I prefer it wild ☺️

Lots of comments so far this year but I'm so far doing a marvellous job of ignoring them.