NOT to want to chop down my leylandii?

[morningpaper]

OK OK I know it is a scourge etc.

I have a long garden and two old leylandii (60 footish) at the very back. They used to block the view of the council scrap yard which backed onto us.

Two years ago they erected four squillion houses on the old scrap yard. Including 4 along the back of our garden - with foundations TEN FEET from the leylandii.

Of course, the gardens there are only 10 feet long and nothing will grow. The leylandii branches touch the back of the houses.

One of the residents has now asked me to remove my leylandii.

What is the right thing to do?

pointy in my case out whole house and garden is overlooked by a very tall block of flats with at least twenty windows facing us (as well as two other house on another bounday which overlook us).
Am sure no one esp wants to look at me and my DSs pottering in the garden but it is inevitable and this is why I am keen to try and keep wahtever privacy I can.
It seems MP feels the same about her garden.
No need to be snappy about it.

dingbat!

stephen you sound like a right selfish idiot talking about pebble dashed walls and taking into no consideration of anyone else outside your "grounds".

Go and live a 10 acre plot in the countryside if you don't expect to have others living next to you. Or buy all the land around you before the developer does.

nincompoop!

it sure as hell is my childrens right to be able to run round their home naked if they want too. how i choose to maintain that privacy is my concern, i just happen to be very fortunate in having only 1 house that almost overlooks me which is covered in the summer (the only time it needs to be) by trees obviously its of no matter in the winter.

fuck me indeed!

We have about 6 30 ft leylandii at the back of our garden (which is 160ft long).

Our neighbours at the back, who are side on, asked if we could lop them back to below roof level & offered to go halves with us. Which we did. The end of our garden is growing much better now it's getting some light. The trees are no longer lifting part of their roof !

As their gardens are so short, I think the least you could do it chop them to a reasonable height. Ours have been left for about 20yrs so are all straggly,. I think, if they can be regulary maintained, they aren't too bad....

think i am off to bed before this descends any further!

pannacotta youre not wrong, i am retiring for the night also, before my head explodes.

until the morrow folks x

Developers are always trying to buy the gardens around her. I would be livid if someone sold, a block of flats or whatever was built, and THEN they tell us we need to prine our trees!

Our neighbours have a huge leylandii hedge running both sides of the length of their front drive (100ft ish). They get it pruned regularly on all 4 sides, and when they had some height removed we really noticed the houses from around the corner for the first time ever - and that is the front.

We have lived in a house with a tiny garden, overlooked from all angles - but we bought it like that and accepted it. Now we have a large garden with no houses on 3 sides I really value the privacy and could not accept someone telling me to change something under those circumstances. (We do prune all trees that overhang neighbours though).

So No, YANBU

leave the trees alone!

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I have leylandi in my garden. Lots of other stuff grow there too.

I can recommend going to a good garden centre and buy a reasonably large Weeping Willow (they are stunning) and Sambucus Nigra or witchhazel.

How about cutting just ONE of the leylandis and plant something else there, to start with?

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If it was you(those of you not) that were overlooked by new neighbours, then trust me, you'd want to keep the trees too. This is exactly my situation. I can't even eat with my family at my dining table because I get an audience of ignorant kids watching us. I cut one of mine down and unfortunately, it made things much worse(well, better if you wanted to be viewed or to view)for us. I hate the bloody things too, but I HATE those neighbours more! grrrrr!!!

When our neighbours chopped theirs down, not only did their windows suddenly loom into ours, but their industrial strength security light shone RIGHT into our bedroom and kitchen, at all times of night, waking us up.

I think a lot can depend on which way your garden faces. Ours is north facing, so the trees didn't cast any shadows in our garden. Theirs would have been in shadow a lot of the day, and their living room too. So I do understand why they did it, but I still don't like it!

BUT...what is it that is getting to them? Is it the type of tree, sucking the nutrients and whatnot or is it the height blocking the light? (or both)

If you were to replace with something else that would give you enough privacy, would that lead to complaints as well? Then would you have to take that down as you had planted it recently?

If it were a choice between your trees and no trees, I would keep the trees. Unless they are going to pay to have them removed and pay for putting in very large trees in their place that they have signed to say are okay, or something else like that.

I wouldn't want to be overlooked by that many people. But then, I wouldn't have bought a house 10 feet from 2 60ft leylandii.

MP

No one has mentioned that surely if you replace these trees then you will be planting after the buildings are there and so is there not some liability with root damage?

Weeping willows are notorious for finding any water in the ground and drinking it, which afaik affects houses as the nature of the ground on which they stand is then changed

Be careful that you are not causing even more problems for yourself

You may need to take professional advise on this

It you remove the trees you will substantially alter the water table locally. If you do this it is possible that the houses that are 10 ft away will develop subsidence

Do be careful & get them to sign a statement saying any damage caused by removing the trees is their own problem to deal with

There is absolutely no way that I would do anything which resulted in being overlooked by 20 windows. The reason I bought this house is that it is completely surrounded by trees and hedges (including leylandii)and I love the feeling of privacy it gives us.

I would do as you said you were thinking of doing ie reduce to the level of the windows and cut back on their side as much as is possible.

They did buy knowing that the trees were there, so I think is is fair enough to make an effort to improve it as much as you can but with keeping your privacy.

My neighbour has a huge leylandii on her side of the fence and we have a laurel and Rowan on our side right next to it. They are both doing pretty well (in fact both sides are about 70 feet and need cutting), so I guess over time you could plant something in front of them which would act as a screen, but it's going to take many years to get them to the height you need for screening.

I have borders around the leylandii which don't seem to suffer

Agree that if I replace them, then I will then by liable to root damage - and as my own house has ongoing subsidence works from tree-roots, this is something which is highly possible! (My own subsidence started after these buildings were put in, and I suspect is due to the water table altering)

We bought the house becuase it had a massive private garden - and as it overlooked (or didn't, due to leylandii ) a scrapyard there were no problems with neighbours etc

There is a LOT of noise from the 4 properties which house tenants (social housing) and a lot of children and hideous dogs - which is fair enough, but the privacy of the leylandii is REALLY IMPORTANT to me!

I would guess the cost of removing both and replacing with mature trees would be around 3-4k which we'd need to remortgage to cover

I don't want to do it, I REALLY don't want to

I think I will go with the trimming to second floor level

I would expect them to cover the cost as they are asking. But I wouldn't cut them down either.

I wouldn't even bother doing that mp tbh - they bought the flats knowing the trees were there. Cutting down to 2nd floor level wouldn't make any difference to their light.

Situation in my neighbour hood:

Two houses next to eachother. Neighbour A has a drive lined with 5 old silver birches, on the north side of Neighbour B. Neighbour B applies to neighbour A for permission to put up a small balcony on the north side of his property, overlooking the birchtrees. It is within a meter of the property border, and overlooking neighbour A's property.
Neigbhour A is being neighbourly, and allows the build to go ahead.

Neighbour B builds his balcony. Neighbour B promptly asks neighoubour A if he would mind chopping down his birch trees, his balcony is in the shade. Neighour A does not want to, as the trees have been there longer, neighbour B knew the trees were there when he built the balcony. (so very similar to your situation)
Neighbour B sues A, and actually gets a court order to chop down neighbour A's birch trees, they are shading the sun to his balcony. Beautiful trees gone. Neighbour A has to pay legal fees and expenses.

Sometimes, it is just not fair.

morningpaper - haven't read the thread.

While I entirely understand that you do not wish to remortgage to raise money for a replacement solution to the leylandii, have you considered building a wall to replace them? If you built a wall, you would solve (forever) the problem of growing trees/hedges and being overlooked, you would never worry about dogs roaming into your garden, you would cut down hugely on noise from neighbours and therefore probably add to the value of your property.

You can grow creepers etc pretty quickly over a wall and there are other good aging techniques.

My parents replaced a nasty old hedge with a wall at the front of their property and it has been a huge success.