to be cross about this letter from our neighbours?

[BecauseImWorthIt]

Letter reads:

"Dear Neighbours!

X and I would be so grateful if you could trim down your trees. The gardens are so small that your trees already last year shadowed big parts of it.

This year most of the garden will be shadowed, even when the sun stands high.

We are also concerned about your [illegible, but I think it refers to either some ivy or a honeysuckle]. It starts to climb over the shed which will cause damp.

As I said, we would be so grateful if you could help us with this."

Background:

Gardens are south facing.

We have one cherry tree, in the bottom corner of our garden. It has been there for longer than we have lived here - 21 years. Our neighbours have been here for about 5. Last year they complained about the blossom falling into their garden, on to their decking and asked me to cut the tree back. I refused, but said I would have it pruned. I forgot to do that, but will do it this year, once it has blossomed. We had a gardening company in returfing our lawn last year, and they asked them to cut down our tree! They didn't ask me about this, just complained about the blossom.

Along the same fence I have a ballerina apple tree, which probably grows about 3 feet taller than the fence. Ballerina trees have one main trunk and only a few branches, all of which are pretty vertical. Nothing overhands their garden and the foliage is very light.

Then there is a ceanothus, which is also about 3 metres taller than the fence. Again, foliage is small and it is not an especially dense shrub.

They built their shed at the bottom of their garden, right up against the fence. Our ivy, and the honeysuckle, not surprisingly carries on growing up our fence and on to their shed.

I am happy to have our cherry tree pruned, and will even cut back the ivy and/or honeysuckle a bit. But I'm not too sure if this is what they want.

These neighbours have been practically re-building their house for the last 4+ years (work is still going on) and they have really, really irritated us with the constant work.

DH is livid about the letter and his response is unhelpfully belligerent.

We clearly have no sense of perspective about this, but I don't want to fall out as we do have to live with them as our neighbours!

So, oh wise MN - what would you counsel?

Well done!
I do think it's important to consider your neighbour's feelings, and within reason, do what you can - which you have.
My neighbour has brambles in her back garden which grow through and over our fence and up under the roof of our shed to the inside! We cut them off after a year of asking her to do it and she went balistic, saying we had no right and she liked her brambles because she used the blackberries!

If her brambles are growing onto your shed then you can chop them down. I'm very happy for neighbours to trim any of my plants that encroach into their gardens.If there is a fence there then anything that goes over the fence and onto your shed is on your land. She has no right to expect her brambles to be allowed to grow on your side of the fence, and is being negligent for allowing them to spread onto your garden in the first place. We have raspberries, but they have a high enough wall behind them that they don't annoy the neighbour.
Anything that is in your garden can be pruned by you. Theoretically you're supposed to throw the prunings back onto the land of the plant owner, but I've never done this as it seems more likely to cause a row than be considered helpful.

Yeah. I think I'd be hacked off if I discovered a pile of cuttings dumped back over teh fence.