JennyC wrote:
"Robert" wrote in message
...

We returned home today from a couple of days away to find that the
neighbours whose property runs across the bottom of our garden had
kindly tidied up the bottom of our garden.

snipped

How dare they !!!!!!!!
You must be a saint to have responded as you did!

I would ask them for compensation money and go out and buy new
hedgerow shrubs etc and re-plant !

Jenny

Exactly... they should put right the damage done. Failing that, how about
117 tons of pea gravel, raked nice and flat in swirly patterns and a 42 ton
rough linestone boulder dropped in the middle of their garden. If they like
an ordered landscape then Japenese might suit.

Pass them a rake with a little bow and a "I helped you with your garden,
wazzock-san."

If you took their view on neighbourly "helping out" in the garden you could
rotovate their lawn and turn it over to spuds while they were at work, Or
flood it and stick some gunnera and flag iris in the muddiest bits
overnight.

At the very leat get them to pay for replacement Hawthorne....

Les




--
Remove Frontal Lobes to reply direct.

"These people believe the souls of fried space aliens inhabit their
bodies and hold soup cans to get rid of them. I should care what they
think?"...Valerie Emmanuel

Les Hemmings a.a #2251 SA

On 5 Jun, 23:40, "Les Hemmings"
wrote:
Pass them a rake with a little bow and a "I helped you with your garden,
wazzock-san."

LOL!! Honorable Les-san, you are very funny )

"Robert" wrote in message

When asked about this kind act
they explained that they did not like nettles and the untidy area and that
it should be all right for us as we had another hedge which separated this
part of our garden from our property and we would not see it. The fact
that they had placed a 2 metre fence between our properties seemed to have
escaped them. (snip)
When I explained what we were trying to achieve they said 'I
suppose that means more nettles and brambles', 'you are being lazy' and
'flies come from your garden - why don't you take your grass cuttings to
the council tip'.
(snip)
I imagine that we could probably take some sort of action against them for
the 'tidying up' but I think that would be completely OTT and as I am sure
that our displeasure at this occurrence was very evident they will not
repeat their act of 'It took me nearly all day and we thought that we were
being helpful'.

Robert, I think that you are being overly generous in your assessment of
your neighbour's actions and far too temperate in your response.

If you think about it a bit more, you should be prepared for more trouble
from these neighbours. They know very well where the boundary is, they
waited till you were absent to strike and they then tried to make it all
your fault for your untidy (to them) gardening style.

These people will no doubt now be bad mouthing you left right and centre
throughout the neighborhood for your justifiable reaction to what they will
be saying was their attempt to do an act of kindness for a neighbour. This
will be an obvious lie but these people will be prepared to justify their
action as being of benefit to you. They don't care about your hurt, just
getting their own way.

These people are morally and ethically bankrupt and they are not good
neighbours. I agree with Sacha that you need to deal with them legally or
else they will think they can get away with it again and again. They will
have no qualms about launching glyphoswate bombs into you back garden and
must be convinced that future action would not be wise. Mongrels!

On Tue, 5 Jun 2007 22:51:56 +0100, Robert wrote
(in article ):

In message et, Sally
Thompson writes

I agree with the others, that's a truly horrific story and I too would have
gone ballistic. I hope you told them that it is (I believe) against the law
to cut a hedge during the nesting season.


Unfortunately it is not against the law to cut a hedge during the
nesting season. It is an offence to intentionally damage or destroy a
nest in use or whilst being built, under the Wildlife and Countryside
Act 1981, however, 'intentionally' is the get out.

You may be thinking of Natural England's Environmental Stewardship
scheme for agricultural land which requires that hedgerows under
management must not be cut between 1 March and 31 July. From memory
there is around 178,000 Km of farm hedgerows under this requirement at
the moment which is a step in the right direction.



Yes, I probably am thinking of the latter. However, your neighbours may not
know the difference :-) As people who are also trying to manage their land
for wildlife and have plenty of "untidy" areas, our hearts go out to you.



--
Sally in Shropshire, UK
bed and breakfast near Ludlow: http://www.stonybrook-ludlow.co.uk
Burne-Jones/William Morris window in Shropshire church:
http://www.whitton-stmarys.org.uk

Robert wrote:

I have already indicated that I am not a fan of my neighbours style of
garden as it appears to me to be a sterile environment, but I do support
their right to interpret their space in their chosen manner.

One thing you can do, then: invite them over for a cup then take them
for a walk in your garden. Explain why things are like this, and why you
like it this way. They'll certainly understand, or at the very least
respect you for it and leave you alone. In return they could do the same
with their garden.
You're going to be next to them for a long time, better start good
relationships right now before it gets too late, too many lives were
made unnecessarily complicated with neighbourhood disputes.


Greg

--
Aoh! La fée Haggis! - Un pti verre?
Oops! - Remember Culloden!
By Jove, ze fée Haggis m'a déconcentred!
No ficus = no spam

"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:

These people will no doubt now be bad mouthing you left right and centre
throughout the neighborhood for your justifiable reaction to what they will
be saying was their attempt to do an act of kindness for a neighbour. This
will be an obvious lie but these people will be prepared to justify their
action as being of benefit to you. They don't care about your hurt, just
getting their own way.

Sorry, but aren't you a bit quick? This sort of reasoning on other
people's behalf (and I mean both Robert and his neigbours here) can very
quickly escalate to war since whatever a person does, even if in good
faith, will be interpreted as a further aggression.


Greg

--
Aoh! La fée Haggis! - Un pti verre?
Oops! - Remember Culloden!
By Jove, ze fée Haggis m'a déconcentred!
No ficus = no spam

In message , Les Hemmings
writes

Exactly... they should put right the damage done. Failing that, how about
117 tons of pea gravel, raked nice and flat in swirly patterns and a 42 ton
rough linestone boulder dropped in the middle of their garden. If they like
an ordered landscape then Japenese might suit.

Pass them a rake with a little bow and a "I helped you with your garden,
wazzock-san."

If you took their view on neighbourly "helping out" in the garden you could
rotovate their lawn and turn it over to spuds while they were at work, Or
flood it and stick some gunnera and flag iris in the muddiest bits
overnight.

At the very leat get them to pay for replacement Hawthorne....

Les


My colleagues came up with a couple of quite evil suggestions:
- did we ever collect slugs and snails at night, if so what did we do
with them;
- erect a 'Trespassers will be prosecuted" sign well within our property
but facing the neighbours and at a height to enable them to see it
without difficulty - this should be sufficiently large to ensure that
they could not possibly claim that they had not seen it (floodlighting
was suggested) but could be in either of two styles, weathered rustic or
with a smart grey background to match their fence panels in an effort to
be sympathetic to the image they are striving for.

--
Robert

In message , Sacha
writes

Of course, if you happen to get a hedgehog or three into your garden.......
;-)

- the badgers would be very grateful for the welcome addition to their
diet.

--
Robert

"Gregoire Kretz" wrote in message
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:

These people will no doubt now be bad mouthing you left right and centre
throughout the neighborhood for your justifiable reaction to what they
will
be saying was their attempt to do an act of kindness for a neighbour.
This
will be an obvious lie but these people will be prepared to justify their
action as being of benefit to you. They don't care about your hurt, just
getting their own way.

Sorry, but aren't you a bit quick?

I don't believe so. Perhaps you didn't read all of Robert's posts
carefully. He helped his neighbours remove a dead tree stump where a Tawny
owl sometimes sat. They repaid this neighbourl act on his by waiting till
he is away and then, without even a "by your leave" they did things to his
garden that he did not want done and which have clearly caused him distress.

Anyone with any knowledge about different styles of gardening, or about
ecological issues or plain good manners should have known that this is not
the way to act to maintain good neighbours.

This sort of reasoning on other
people's behalf (and I mean both Robert and his neigbours here) can very
quickly escalate to war since whatever a person does, even if in good
faith, will be interpreted as a further aggression.

I agree, it can, but these people have acted in a way which is simply
unforgivable. And (if UK law is anything like our local law and I believe
it is even more stringent given the Animal Libber's actions with regard to
various UK animal experiments) could result in civil (or perhaps even
criminal) action being taken against them.

They trespassed, they took action causing real damage (and perhaps long
lasting damage if long action herbicides have been used) to Robert's
property. They cannot claim to being unaware of where the boundaries of the
properties were and even if they did, ignorance is not a defence at law.
Their action was willful, premeditated and most definitely deliberate and
they then tried to justify it by blaming Robert for his own personal
preference for a particular type of garden. I would not trust these
neighbours to either stay on their own side of the fence or not to cause
more damage.

On Mon, 4 Jun 2007 22:24:32 +0100, Robert wrote
(in article ):


We returned home today from a couple of days away to find that the
neighbours whose property runs across the bottom of our garden had
kindly tidied up the bottom of our garden.

big snip about vandalism of neighbours

I imagine that we could probably take some sort of action against them
for the 'tidying up' but I think that would be completely OTT and as I
am sure that our displeasure at this occurrence was very evident they
will not repeat their act of 'It took me nearly all day and we thought
that we were being helpful'.


Robert, sorry to return to this a bit late in the day but I don't have much
time to post atm. One thing I would suggest is that you take photographs of
the damage (if you haven't already) - and do it quite openly. If ever you
have problems again, you have evidence. Hedges re-grow, your nettles will
come back, but you have photographs. If you do it openly I think it may
scare your neighbours that you are thinking of some legal action.

We once had an unpleasant neighbour who tried very hard to provoke us by
putting all sorts of things against our boundary fence (he was very
childish). Then he started to build a compost heap right against the fence,
which would of course have eventually rotted the panels. I quite openly
leant over the fence and took photos (I think actually I didn't even have a
film in the camera in those pre-digital days!). The next day he removed it.


--
Sally in Shropshire, UK
Burne-Jones/William Morris window in Shropshire church:
http://www.whitton-stmarys.org.uk

On 6 Jun, 11:20, (Gregoire Kretz) wrote:
One thing you can do, then: invite them over for a cup then take them
for a walk in your garden. Explain why things are like this, and why you
like it this way. They'll certainly understand, or at the very least
respect you for it and leave you alone. In return they could do the same
with their garden.
You're going to be next to them for a long time, better start good
relationships right now before it gets too late, too many lives were
made unnecessarily complicated with neighbourhood disputes.

Sweet and so true, but so hard to do! You're right off course. This
issue has stemed from naivety on the part of the neighbours, not
really understanding Robert's ideas for his garden. As I had said,
once this happened to me and when I clearly explained the differences
between people's aspirations for their gardens, tolerance set in and
all is well. Both sides learn from each others.

My neighbours at the bottom of the garden have put a hedge about 5 feet
from the end to hide the hawthorn hedge which has now grown into trees
covered in ivy. I have two sets of neighbours at the bottom as their
boundary comes halfway cross the garden end.
The others also chuck their rubbish at the end. By now both sides are
about 4 foot higher than my side.
We have hawthorn hedges (not allowed fences thank goodness) but my point
is that with dogs I need the hedges to be trimmed regularly, just back
to 7 foot high, or else once they've grown into trees it makes it easy
for the dogs to escape into their gardens.

I have been trying for about 2 years to come up with a solution to this
problem which wouldn't look too tidy, even chain link and then grow
hawthorn through it.

Maybe you could also have dogs which could get under or over fences but
not actually get through thick hawthorn? Think of the damage which
'might' be done to their perfect garden then!
I agree with others you were commendably restrained and I would have
immediately planted a hedge behind the fence which, with a bit of luck
would have pushed the fence over in a couple of years!

Janet
--
Janet Tweedy
Amersham Gardening Association
http://www.amersham-gardening.net

On 6/6/07 20:41, in article , "Robert"
wrote:

In message , Sacha
writes

Of course, if you happen to get a hedgehog or three into your garden.......
;-)

- the badgers would be very grateful for the welcome addition to their
diet.

We get hedgehogs here and my daughter who lives about 5 minutes' walk away
does, too. In fact, she found some babies and rang the local Prickly Ball
hedgehog farm which came to get them. They were in an old box in her
garage, 'awake but feeble' in her words.
But, knowing the love badgers have for hedgehogs as a tasty snack, I have to
add that in the last 5 days we've seen 3 badgers in the lanes immediately
around us. Is there, perhaps, some better source of food for them that is
more easily available now?

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
(remove weeds from address)

In article , Robert
writes

My colleagues came up with a couple of quite evil suggestions:
- did we ever collect slugs and snails at night, if so what did we do
with them;

Or how about a nice long washing line , now that the area is cleared?
You could put out your old gardening clothes or winter underwear to air.

A nice tree house for little kiddywinks to sit in with binoculars on a
Saturday afternoon, though I do like the idea of the floodlit notice
especially at night
However seeing what people are prepared to live with, in fact pay oodles
of money for in the name of D. Garvin's design ideas, (namely iron
structures and huge great walls,) the neighbours might enjoy a nice
billboard or two!

Of course there are those sheds that people erect on allotments, usually
cobbled together with bits of old wallpapered walls, old windows and tin
roofs? We're having our patio doors replaced next month so we have 4
huge double glazed units you could use for skylights.
--
Janet Tweedy
Dalmatian Telegraph
http://www.lancedal.demon.co.uk

"Janet Tweedy" wrote in message
...
In article , Robert
writes

My colleagues came up with a couple of quite evil suggestions:
- did we ever collect slugs and snails at night, if so what did we do with
them;

Or how about a nice long washing line , now that the area is cleared? You
could put out your old gardening clothes or winter underwear to air.

A nice tree house for little kiddywinks to sit in with binoculars on a
Saturday afternoon, though I do like the idea of the floodlit notice
especially at night
However seeing what people are prepared to live with, in fact pay oodles
of money for in the name of D. Garvin's design ideas, (namely iron
structures and huge great walls,) the neighbours might enjoy a nice
billboard or two!

Of course there are those sheds that people erect on allotments, usually
cobbled together with bits of old wallpapered walls, old windows and tin
roofs? We're having our patio doors replaced next month so we have 4 huge
double glazed units you could use for skylights.

I love those kind of sheds. Many years ago the uncle of a kid I used to play
with had a shed made entirely from doors scrounged from demolition sites.
The walls, roof, everything was doors. He'd used glazed doors for windows,
and even the door was a door!

Steve