Trees in neighbouring garden

tizzle6560

No doubt has already been covered before but house 3 doors along from us, has 2 enormous tress that block the sun to all of our gardens.

It is rented so tenants dont have the right to do anything, and Landlord is completely disinterested.. Anything we can do?

unforeseen

Short answer - No

Mojisola

Move?

Offer to pay to have the work done?

SplanK

There is no such thing as 'right to light'. If they are posing a danger then they can be asked to make it safe, but if they are healthy then you can only trim back anything that's over hanging the boundary (not forgetting to offer the cutting back to the owner!)

Davesnave

tizzle6560 wrote: »

No doubt has already been covered before but house 3 doors along from us, has 2 enormous tress that block the sun to all of our gardens.
...Landlord is completely disinterested.. Anything we can do?

As Mojisola says, if there are several of you and the landlord is 'disinterested,' the only way to resolve the situation is to club together and offer a removal via a tree surgeon. After all, it might improve the landlord's property too.

The alternative of moving to a property not affected like this is much more expensive.

Whether you or your neighbours can agree to do this, and to do it equitably, is a separate issue!

pendragon_arther

This advice isn't legal so I won't suggest driving a copper nail into said tree late at night. Please ignore this.

Davesnave

pendragon_arther wrote: »

This advice isn't legal so I won't suggest driving a copper nail into said tree late at night. Please ignore this.

As in all cases where this answer is given, I feel bound to quote the words of Professor Nicholas Lepp, who knows a tad more than I do on the subject, if nothing about paragraphing!

[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]TO UNDERSTAND the potential impact of embedding a poece of copper in a tree trunk on the long term health of the tree, some basic plant physiology and chemistry needs to be considered. In order to kill a tree, a toxin must interfere with cell division in the regions from which a tree grows - root and shoot tips and the cambium, a ring of dividing cells inthe stem and roots. In addition, inhibition of a vital process such as photosynthesis will have a similar deleterious effect. Implanting a piece of copper in a tree trunk will only affect such vital processes if the copper is transported from the implant to the roots and shoots. There are two routes that copper could take. The first is in the xylem, the woody tissue that forms the bulk of the tree trunk (wood) but also forms the main transport route for water from the soil, via the roots to the leaves. Movement here is controlled by the rate of water loss from the leaf and this process is regulated by stomata on the under surface of the leaf. Materials move passively with the flow of water, although those with a positive charge will fix to negative charged sites in the walls of the xylem tissues. The phloem tissue (bark) is highly specialised and is responsible for transport of products of photosynthesis from leaves to shoots and roots. It can rapidly seal off any injured tissues. Copper from an implant would need to dissolve before it could move to roots or shoots and affect plant vitality. The pH of the phloem and xylem sap is slightly acidic (pH 5 - 6) so some copper would slowly dissolve. Copper binds preferentially to the xylem tissue and shows limited mobility as a cation. It readily forms stable organic complexes with small molecules such as amino acids and appears to move through the xylem in this form. These complexes are very stable and may not dissociate at the end of the transport pathway. If so, these will not easily pass across biological membranes and inhibit metabolic activity. Copper movement from leaves, via the phloem is very slow so the redistribution via this tissue from an implant would also be slow. The slow rate of copper release from a metallic implant would be unlikely to cause significant problems for a healthy tree. As the main route to living tissue would be via the xylem, the patterns of water movement within a tree would also be important in the subsequent transport of copper. These vary with tree species - in some water ascends straight up whilst in others, water movement occurs in a spiral of verying pitch. Several implants would be required to make certain that all parts of the tree crown were reached by copper. In conclusion, I would consider it unlikely that a single copper implant would prove fatal to a healthy tree; an old or already debilitated tree may prove to be more susceptible.

(Professor) Nicholas W Lepp, Professor of Plant Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University

[/FONT]

Grenage

Not to mention that the trees have assumedly been there a while, and you can't go around removing everything that isn't to your liking.

Offering to pay for the work is probably your only hope.

Hoploz

What sort of trees are they? If its a couple of leylandii the owner probably wouldn't be too attached to them, and might agree them being topped or something, but if it's a pair of old oak trees that's unlikely to be a go-er. It's also possible there could be TPOs

Zola.

Ask the tenants if they dont mind, then if they agree chop away, can always blame them and say they said they had permission !

Davesnave

Zola. wrote: »

Ask the tenants if they dont mind, then if they agree chop away, can always blame them and say they said they had permission !

Something like this was going on when my daughter was moving out of her rental. The leylandii at the end of her garden affected several neighbours behind.

I believe the plan was for her to tip the wink after the agent's final inspection and then for a hit squad to move in to fell the trees.

I was there when the planning went on but I'm not sure if it happened, or whether it was just 'man talk.' They were big men!