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.

That can't be right surely. You're already maintaining 2 thirds of it.🤔

I think either the neighbour who owns it (on whose land the tree trunks grow) shares the costs in full for both sides - so they owe you £500 at the moment - or you pay to maintain only your side.

We have a similar row of Leylandii along our garden which is the boundary hedge with several neighbours, not just one (corner plot). The trunks are on their land so I can’t cut it down - if I could, I would! We trim our side, the various neighbours do theirs.

If the owner insists it’s a joint responsibility, talk to them about cutting it down and replacing with a native hedge instead.

I’m wondering if you pay for all maintenance, as a one off, can the contractor reduce it considerably? If you pay for all of it, it’s your call! I’m inclined to pay and get a much lower hedge.

@TizerorFizz the reason I organised and paid for the lions share of cutting the top was so that I could reduce it significantly in height. Luckily everyone agreed that I could do it. In an ideal world though it would be lower.
I would love there to be a native hedge instead . Privacy seems to be a big issue to others . The challenge would be what to do while the new hedge grew….

The cost of sorting the whole hedge which is 200m plus would be huge . Not my problem…

Do you sit against a hedge peering through it or over it? We are partly next to a public bridleway and we planted a replacement native hedge. So yes, a couple of years to thicken and then it’s easy to maintain and supports birds nests and other wildlife. No brainer for us. The leylandii belonging to our neighbours is, by contrast, horrible. Just a green dense mass. But it’s the shorter side of the garden.