Battling the jungle next door

[Misty9]

We live next door to an owner occupied house but the garden is a jungle. I've just started to try and sort out our garden but have realised that whatever I do, it'll soon be swallowed by the bindweed next door or their bloody enormous wisteria tree. We don't really talk much so it's difficult to broach the subject, but what can I do to mitigate these issues and enjoy a lovely garden ourselves? Picture attached. I also resent spending hours on their plants and not my own!

We could erect a higher bit of fence (the fence is theirs) but that will only temporarily interrupt nature and I don't have loads of time to keep on top of pruning their plants/bushes

Any ideas or experience with this?

For context, I've spent hours this week cutting back the wisteria. It was almost obscuring that ugly wall and going for our plants.

Well first of all i would embrace their wisteria coming over as they are beautiful plants and need to be fairly mature to flower. If you put some horizontal wires on your wall you can tie it in and make it easier to
Keep tidy and enjoy the spring flowers.

Next depends on what the other plants are? If they are also lovely plants you can use them as a backdrop to whatever you want to do on your side - looks like they are providing quite a lot of privacy which is hard to get in small gardens so you might want to reconsider your thoughts?

Let us know what the other plants are - or take some close ups so we can help identify them.

Why not embrace it? Your neighbours evidently don't use their garden much, so you have a lot more privacy and peace & quiet than you would if you have "normal" people next door. Also, an overgrown garden is quite a wildlife reserve which is nice if you want to attract birds etc. Wisteria is lovely - let it grow, train it.

Fair point. It doesn't flower much but I expect it will love being cut right back so might now! The plant in the furthest right hand side is a holly bush, but it's being strangled by bindweed, as is the wisteria further along. The bindweed is the biggest issue tbh as it's coming both from under the fence and from the plants over the fence. The wall is theirs so we can't do much to it without their permission I thought? We've got a couple of young honeysuckle plants ready to train up trellis in front of it but there's no point with the wisteria there.

Apart from the holly bush, all the rest of the green in that picture is wisteria and bindweed.