Jamie wrote:

[-]
The malaise seems localised around the first walnut which was
just starting to make itself obvious above a 6 ft wall. It has
had a very small branch which was almost growing over the wall
cut off by the neighbour, and I suspect something rather more
drastic may have been done.

Not to excuse the 'something drastic', but as someone plagued by
tree-planting neighbours, I have to ask... do you know how big that
walnut tree will be when it's mature? If it's a little over 6' tall now
and one small branch is almost over the wall, then in a few years it
will be destabilising that wall, and a few years after that it will be
killing plants (shading and juglone) in your neighbour's garden.

About 5 years ago our neighbours on one side planted *sycamores* and
poplars less than 2' from the property boundary (our fence) to screen
the windows in their new extension from our view. Not that we were
bothered, and we have nets in our windows. The trees are closer to our
house than theirs. We no longer see the morning sun in the kitchen (I
miss it), the tree roots are taking all the moisture from the flower/veg
bed on our side of the fence -- my raspberry crop is pathetic and the
gooseberries are suffering -- and the alder 'cones' are destroying my
lawnmower. They also planted a *beech* tree about 3m away from both our
house and another neighbour's house. My sole consolation is that they
planted a gingko about 4m from their own extension. And we're in a
conservation area: trees over 3" DBH can't be felled without a
permission and usually a report from a tree surgeon proving they're
unsafe.

The neigbour on the other side planted a line of trees to screen her
manor house from the rest of the village; in another three years or so
I'll no longer be able to see my favourite view out over the fields, and
I'll have to abandon my dream of a domestic wind turbine in our garden
:-((

regards
sarah



--
Think of it as evolution in action.