Who owns a hedge

[olympicsrock]

Hello I’m grateful for help. There is a hedge grown on land that is outside our property. I don’t believe it belongs to us from the diagram of deeds. We are being asked to contribute to it’s maintenance to the tie of £1K per year.

There are no Ts on the boundary on our deeds.
From memory the sellers information pack said it was jointly ownership and maintenance.

We are the house within the red square the lane is owned by our neighbours.

Grateful for comments.

Where there are no t marks the presumption is that both sides are responsible for boundary maintenance unless the title register states otherwise. If you are confident the hedge is not on your land then you're not responsible for its upkeep. The problem is that without features to measure the boundary line against/between it can often be impossible to accurately state where that line is on the ground. It's easier where, for example, you have a pair of semi-detached houses and the boundary between the gardens follows the line of the internal party wall.

NB a hedge is a boundary structure, not the boundary itself.

Is the hedge used as your boundary or do you have a fence on the boundary with the hedge outside it?

I spoke to a neighbour who built the house. There is a 2 foot metal fence within the hedge our side of the tree trunks which is the boundary apparantly.
My take is that they own the hedge but we are jointly responsible for maintaining it ie we trim our side.

12 months ago we took down the height by 6 ft and shared the cost of this. The challenge is that maintenance costs are huge… even doing our side is 1K per year.

If it’s not grown on your land then you have no obligation to put towards the maintenance. BUT your neighbour has no obligation to maintain the hedge either, as I assume it is suitably marking the boundary without maintenance.

Therefore if you would like it to be maintained, then the sensible thing would be to pay towards it - even though you’re not obliged to.

Hi sorry I'm a little confused after your update. Is the cost of upkeep of the hedge on your side of the fence the same £1k you're being asked to contribute (i.e. you're being asked by your gardener or similar) or is this a separate £1k i.e. it would actually be costing you £2k a year to maintain someone else's hedge?

I'm asking because there's not a lot you can do if it's just the cost of trimming their plants back to the property line, but if someone, somewhere is asking you to contribute an additional £1k then they are being unreasonable. As you say there is no "T" anywhere on the deeds, and I'd not lose any sleep over politely saying no. If it turns nasty it would be worth seeing a solicitor and getting a letter written but I wouldn't pre-empt that.

We have maintained our side so that it looks tidy and the top to prevent it blocking light but they also wanted a contribution to cut their side which borders a lane which we never use ( dead end private lane past our house) . Seems too much to me as our annual hedge bill is significant with what we do.
The hedge is huge ! Hence not small amounts.

@monpetitlapin they want an addition amount 1K this year on top of the 1K we pay to keep their hedge trimmed back to what we now know is the boundary.

I’m hoping that the deeds and info from neighbour to confirm that the low fence is the boundary will settle this…

That’s basically holding you to ransom. They will let the hedge grow! So I would trim your side and the top. I would say no money for anything else as it’s their responsibility.

We have a similar hedge. However we have reasonable neighbours and they maintain the top to an agreed height. We maintain our side. The hedge is too close to our fence and the next issue will be that’s it’s pushing against our fence. Hedges like this are thugs!

Sounds like unsuitable plants were chosen for the hedge. £1,000 pa is a ridiculous sum. Check legal ownership. Refuse to pay and just trim what you want for light yourselves. Hedges only need cutting twice a year usually.

I have 360 metres of field hedge trimmed yearly by a man and his tractor hedge trimmer - cost £100. You are being ripped off. Hedges provide valuable shelter to wildlife and preferable to fencing any day. If you maintain it for 10 years, you can claim ownership of the land beneath it. Win win IMHO.

Why not get a quote for having the hedge that borders your land trimmed on both sides and top. Then agree to pay half if the price seems good. Maybe it was agreed in the past that the hedge would give both properties adequate privacy whereas the small marker fence wouldn’t… Even a 2m high fence doesn’t always give enough privacy if houses have windows close to each other or if there’s a slope involved.

If it’s a shared responsibility, paying half seems fair. But shop around for someone cheaper. Like pp have mentioned, your neighbours could just leave the hedge to grow wild or take it away altogether and not replace it with anything.

Normally a hedge that grew on a boundary with a public road would need to be trimmed back by the owner to stop it encroaching onto the public footpath or road. Is this actually a publicly accessible lane or just their driveway? My guess ... really not a lawyer so uninformed guess .... would be that if it's basically their driveway, it's for them to maintain their side but if it's a lane the public could walk down if they wanted then it's on you to maintain both sides.
£2k a year makes it worthwhile to buy your own chainsaw and learn how to do it yourself! Or find someone cheaper!

Edited: sorry I see you actually posted in legal. I blame my late night lack of glasses. You probably are after a genuine legal view rather than my ramblings! Apologies.

The challenge is the height… it’s 20 ft and the work needs tall ladders and safety gear. I think the initial huge cost related to the amount of hedge removed form the top ( more than 6 foot was removed. It’s 80m long..

I wish it was that simple . The hedge continues up a private lane owned by one neighbour. It goes on for 100s of meters with three houses out side of it and three houses the other side ( but the hedge and private lane/ drive is only owned by one of them.

In the past I think it didn’t get done due to cost hence becoming totally unmanageable. The people on the lane side like the high height and privacy . The people our side want more light and a lower height ( but still value privacy. )

I’m really interested to hear that if you maintain something for 10 years you own it.

I think due to Covid there is so much tree surgery work that the local tree surgeons are in huge demand - hence the inflated prices. There was a 6 month wait to get my work days booked in.

I’m hoping now that I’ve shown the deeds to the owner of the hedge he will get on and maintain it ( or remove it and replace with something more attractive and cost effective.

I’d love a native hedge or even laurel over a fence.

This was hedge cutting day last year…

Looks like leylandii - a cheap, but stupid choice of hedge to plant. But, as the owner of many hedges, including some adjoining a main road for about 100m, I can tell you that maintenance and disposal of the cuttings is never easy.

That’s is just awful. I would try and move. They simply haven’t been maintained. What about the council and the high hedges legislation? Our adjacent hedge is leylandii and it’s maintained to 9ft. It’s not great but better than this monstrosity. The cost of removing “your” hedge is massive.

You do NOT want Laurel!!! It gets just as big. We have beech but it needs cutting annually. £100 isn’t available here! It would cost more. However I would contact the council and ask about the legislation around high hedges and enforcement.

Not a lawyer, but a planner.
The drawing you attach looks like an extract from the planning application drawings rather than Land Registry documents. Have you got a copy of your Deeds - plan and written section? This may explain things for you.

Have you done a search at Land Registry to check who owns the land adjacent to your property. And if there are any restrictions/covenants etc relating to the hedge on that?

As the hedge is comprised of Leylandii (evergreen) it would be covered by the High Hedges legislation. If you can show that you have no duty relating to ownership/maintenance of the hedge, and you can prove who does own it, you can approach the Council to help get the hedge maintained properly. I think the usual height agreed under the legislation is around 2m (6'6"). Council's usually expect that you have tried to reach an agreement with your neighbour before involving them.

@Seeline yes it’s a planning document but seems to be the clearest document re ownership / property boundary as the hedge is marked.

I may have to look at Land Registry. I may have done that a year ago but losing the plot here.

I’ve had a look at the high hedges legislation and there is no specific agreed height. The agreed maximum height is calculated by an algorithm related to garden size, aspect and the distance form property.

They would have enforced it to be cut but we are now not much more than that. And at least the height was amicably agreed . The challenge is the annual maintenance . I was able to suck up the cost of our side and the top but the other side is not something I am willing to entertain.

I’m hoping that I have been persuasive enough with neighbour. Until the hedge was cut I hated it with a passion. Now I tolerate as at least it is green ( mostly) and we have privacy.

I will keep you all updated.

Is the hedge where the green bit is? I’d imagined it was on the boundary line on the other side of your house. Unless there is something in the deeds about you maintaining the side abutting the lane, I’d agree you should not have to contribute towards maintaining that side.

This is from the RHS. They do mention a height. Good info from them.

They also show pictures of a nuisance hedge.

It would be a no from me

I would maintain my side of it, but not help with theirs, unless it was my hedge

Unless I‘m missing something, your neighbour seems unreasonable to expect you to pay to maintain your side AND contribute to maintaining their side. What‘s their rational for that? I assume you‘ve just said to them let‘s just both maintain our own sides?