Is this trespass and criminal damage?

[clareanna]

Hope someone can help me! We live in a flat in a Victorian house - ours is the main part of the house and includes all the gardens and driveway. The other flats are accessed through a separate doorway on the side of the building. Our garden has a spectacular wisteria in it, which grows up the side of the house and along over our kitchen - crossing over the front doors to the flats. I have come home tonight to find the whole thing has been cut down. The plant is on our side of a boundary wall.
We have had no requests to trim it, and regularly prune it back ourselves.
It is about 40 years old and magnificent in summer and now it's gone.
We share the freehold with the neighbour.
Do we have any grounds for legal recourse? Or am I now destined to be involved in a battle of silent attrition with him?!!!

How do you know it was him?

No idea but I would be bloody furious. Was it growing on your land? Do you have recent photos? I would definitely seek legal recourse

bb888 - he owns the other flats in our house, but no longer lives here- he rents them out. im going to check with the other residents to see if they know/ saw anything. But if they had an issue with the wisteria then as he is their landlord it's likely they would ask him. It would have been a big job needing ladders and a van to get rid of all . the branches and cuttings. (Which would have been on our garden). It is definitely growing in our garden - which we own outright.

The others in the flats are typically young professionals / junior doctors who rent the flats for a year or so - can't see any of them being bothered to pay to get it cut down!

I suspect he was worried about it causing damage to the brickwork of his flats??

It must have been trespass which is a civil matter. It's quite possibly criminal damage but it's complicated by the fact your plant was touching his building from the sounds of it. I may be wrong but I think you're not entitled to grow something up someone else's flat. But really he should have come and discussed it. And if necessary cut it back from where it touched his property, but not the bits touching yours.

I would be absolute devestated by this but I don't think there's anything you can do if he owned the bit of land it was planted on. I don't understand people who chop down established plants like this :(

Sorry I missed that about the boundary. I would speak to the police and be looking for them to talk to him about his criminal damage. I would be livid!

thanks for your comments - it doesn't massively affect his flats - we have 2 floors and he has the attic and basement flat. He is a total arise. know this is a totally first world problem! Will report back if I find out whodunnit

It seems bizarre that anyone would pay money or go to a huge amount of effort to remove something without trying to get the person who owned it to fix it first. Could the neighbour have potentially been mistaken about who owned it (even with it being in your garden? :-/ )

Have the roots been take out? If not it might start to regrow. It sounds like whoever did it - and you have no proof so far - will need to pay to buy a very large one and replant it for you.