I'm devastated, any advice please ?

duchy

I wonder what the other side of the story is.

MIL asked SIL to "trim" the hedge and went out shopping with daughter...SIL got carried away with his boys toys ......MIL comes home and is mortified and embarassed -and scared to answer the door when the neighbour comes knocking. Neighbour then calls the police -MIL is mortified and sends daughter over as it's her bloody husband who has caused the mess .

BTW how did neighbour manage to give your kids drinks, sweets etc through such a huge hedge ?

I'd be furious too but it doesn't sound malicious just an idiot SIL so hopefully it can all get sorted amicably.

sharnad

They shod have asked you to cut a few feet off. High hedge legisrion can apply but you have to pay the council I think for them to look at that maybe they didn't want to do that. They should have discussed it with you first

amcluesent

OP should be a good neighbour and cut the rest of the leyllandii monster down to 2m all along the boundary.

Enterprise_1701C

I am not saying what your neighbour did was right, but not only do the hedges of that height create a massive shadow over the garden, they also use an awful lot of water that makes it impossible to maintain the garden by the hedge.

We had a neighbour who was constantly promising to cut down a conifer that was bordering on our property. They didn't, but they did have the house reposessed which meant we were in the garden with a bow saw PDQ and the tree was gone in no time flat.

The estate agent said they were quite happy for the rubbish from the tree to go with the rest of the rubbish they had left our in the garden, but could we please avoid cutting down the rest of the trees!

Just saying that I can see why your neighbour did it, we now have far better light in our garden and I can actually use the garden that was previously taken over by the conifer. Hedges are nice but they can be a real nuisance if they are not yours yet take over the garden they are next to so that you can't use it.

culpepper

If they had not spoken for a few years,it might be that they resented the newer higher height of the hedge which has had much more effect on their own living conditions than it did on your's and so stopped speaking as a result.
As they had been previously friendly,they were too embarrassed perhaps to broach the subject and possibly spoil the status Quo.
Several years later and they have an offer via SIL to lessen the problem and so jump at the chance without realising that SIL is actually going to help out rather more than they would have felt comfortable with.
Now the deed is done and they cant just put the top of the hedge back on however much they wish they could.

Lotus-eater

Imagine living with that monstrosity 5 metres from your house! It would make everything gloomy.
As someone else asked, if the neighbours had asked you to half the height, would you have done? I think we know the answer to that. No.

Who is legally at fault here, the neighbour, or the person asked to cut 12" off it?

valk_scot

The other thing is that if the neighbour is a single older lady she may not have felt brave enough to come round to complain, especially to a man. I know my elderly widowed mum was deeply intimidated by a couple of her male neighbours...they weren't rude or unpleasent men by any means, just very large with loud voices and firm opinions. She went out of her way to avoid anything but a nod and good morning to them but I'm sure they'd have been mortified to know how nervous she was of them. I don't think she had any problems with them to discuss, in fairness, but it's very likely she wouldn't have told me in case I went round to open any sort of discussion. A lot of folk do suffer in silence because they're too nervous to complain about something.

mi_jardin

meer53 wrote: »

Nope, they have a small retaining wall behind the hedge and a paved garden, no plants !

Thats probably because they cant grow anything in such shade, sorry, but that would pee me off too. Not that I approve of what they have done.
It may be nice for you to have such high hedges but you have think of your neighbours too. Those trees will be sucking up all available water and causing such deep shade that they wont be able to grow anything! Is that fair?

Davesnave

Lotus-eater wrote: »

Who is legally at fault here, the neighbour, or the person asked to cut 12" off it?

That's a relevant point. Few liked my suggestion that a recourse to law would likely be a hiding to nothing, but that's even more the case now. I notice the SIL was 'unavailable!'

juliebunny

I really think that the size of hedge depends on the size of garden, where it is relative to the homes and what the neighbours think but I stand by my original opinion that they had no right to do this and I'm impressed that the Police took it seriously. I would be seriously pee'd off if my neighbours did this to me.

When we were selling our mums house, we accepted an offer, then the 'new buyers' came round and ripped out 2 hedges from the garden!! They did NOT have permission. We were devastated, I wish we had called the Police in hindsight. We cancelled the sale to them though which they were very upset about. Inside the house were loads of confirmations of orders they had already place for new bathroom etc, etc, so I hope that cost them a lot of money too. Grrr.