What ground do I have re my neighbours tree

[Cherryblossom200]

Hi there,

I live next to an elderly lady nearing 80 who is very attached to her tree. It's a huge beech tree which is approx 7/8 metres from my house. The houses we live in are only small two bedroom houses and the tree is way too big to be so close to the houses.

The main issue apart from the proximity, is the leaves that fall in my garden is literally killing my grass. I have no lawn left and I'm good at trying to clear the leaves up every year. Plus I get virtually not sunshine due to where the tree is. Yet my neighbour has sun all day.

The tree doesn't have a TPO, and hardly been cut back since I've lived in the house the past 5 years.

Ideally I'd like the tree to go. However I don't think my neighbour would accept that. I think it's way to tall and the bulk of the tree above is too big in the summer, so alternatively I'd like my neighbour to reduce the crown of the tree by about half way .

I have no idea where I stand legally with this. I know that in general there are hardly any laws to protect people out there when it comes to trees?!

Any ideas?

Thanks!

You can only chop what hangs over your fence, so you are going to have to be really nice and offer to organise/pay for it being chopped if she agrees.

Out of interest how long have you lived there?

You have no rights. If branches overhang your land you can chop them back at your own expense. That’s it

its her tree , you can ask but you have no rights to fell it or coppice it

If the lady wants her tree as it is, there is nothing you can do. Don't bully her.

Ah I see 5 years...so it was there when you moved in and I can't imagine it has grown a whole heap in 5 years or moved.

Sorry, Nothing you can do on this except cut back the bits that overhang your garden.
you do need to "offer" these back to her legally though..
Not what you wanted to hear I know,

What does the size of your house have to do with anything?

Have you asked, offering to pay, for it to be reduced in size?

Frankly it looks fine to me, it's nice to have trees, it's not looming over your garden.

Tress are part of nature, leaves are part of that. Maybe your lawn needs a feed?

Jeez. It looks like it would be a lovely tree in leaf. Great for wildlife. But yeah, you want a barren wasteland because your lawn might look less than ideal. Leave the old lady and her lovely tree alone!

Looks ok to me. YABU

You have no rights, but i understand your frustration as we had a similar (now resolved) situation.

In our case the neighbours didnt really like the tree either, but didnt want to pay to remove it. So we paid 100% of the cost and organised the whole thing to get the tree removed. We wanted it gone so made sense that we pay for it.

Not sure that would work in your situation though if the neighbour is attached to it.... Any wires or cables near it? We were told that because the tree in our neigh ours garden had grown so much the phone cables were now in the middle of it, they would remove it, but as it would be logged as a complaint against the neighbours for not maintaining, we didnt want to rock the boat given that they were allowing us to do it.

On a side note though, you dont want them to lob an amount off the top, it needs to be cut back properly. Cutting off the top puts the tree into shock making it grow outwards twice as fast, so you would end up with a shorter but far wider tree which im guessing would cause more issues with blocking light.

We have miss growing under our large line tree rather than grass - we didn’t fight it - let nature do what it will. We love the moss - it is soft, doesn’t need mowing, looks beautiful and stays green in summer.

Agree with others. We had this issue in another house. Neighbour was absolutely obsessed with trees. It made our lives an absolute misery. That tree looks fine to be honest. Let it be.

You don’t have any rights. The tree looks fine to me.

Firstly I absolutely love nature and tree's. However the person who gains mostly from the tree is my neighbour who sits outside and sun bathes and we sit in the shade most of the time.

It's all about quality of life too, so we all benefit from the tree and it's beauty but also we all gain from the short amount of sun our country gets. It's only fair and selfish on my neighbours side to not consider this.

All I'd like is it to the bulk of it to be made smaller and I'd be happy to chat to her about contributing towards it. But I know the man who used to live in my house approached my neighbour and got a bad reaction when he suggested it was reduced in size.

Ultimately if your neighbour doesn't want it to be chopped, they don't have to do anything. It's their decision. If it didn't go well before, I doubt it will this time.

Britain is not sooooo warm and sunny that having your garden shaded entirely by a tree is not crap really - and it has by no means finished growing - I would speak to planning dept see what they say

Here is a better photo, it doesn't really show just how close it is to my house but it really is close and huge when the leaves grow. You can see the difference in lawn between mine and hers. Mainly due to the fact we get little sunlight and she gets it all.

I doubt I will get anywhere with saying anything, I'm just hopefully who ever moves in after her will cut it back.

What an amazing tree! If I were you, I'd sort out that ivy on your fence as it'll bring it down.

How is that putting your whole garden into shade?
The only thing you can do is offer to pay a tree surgeon to give it a haircut.

You're prepared to 'contribute towards it'!!!!!

If you want the work doing you should pay for it all yourself.

But sounds like she won't agree to it anyway, so you're stuck with her beautiful tree.

The poor lawn is just as likely to be caused by your large conifer.

The beech tree is lovely, I would be far more worried about that ugly consider thing that is at the end of your garden. Is that yours or your neighbours.

What direction does your garden face?

Have you thought about taking the conifer down?

Consider/conifer