Vocal Voices

upstairs - not the tenant, but the owner - is such a £&£%*£$ (insert whichever derogatory term you can think of)

Remember my post a while back asking about responsibility of garden maintenance and who has to provide the equipment? Well; tenant is responsible for that so is going ahead with having the back garden cleared at her cost - and I suppose I'll just have to continue doing what I do in the way of mowing and hedge cutting (which I don't get a thank you for either!) . However to get to the upstairs garden you have to walk along a path that runs alongside my boundary (their garden is behind mine) and along said path are a number of Portuguese Laurels (Aucuba's) that, in the years that upstairs has been a rental, have just grown stupid high and are overhanging my property quite a bit. They're reducing light into my dining room and kitchen and when the aucuba berries are ripe and fall they make an almighty black gunky mess.

So I messaged him to ask if he would please consider getting in a tree surgeon to reduce their height - I was willing to phone around for quotes because I'm home anyway and I'd also contribute to the cost because it does sort of affect me - no reply from him. This morning I then messaged to let him know that I am going to go ahead and lop the overhanging branches; which I know I'm entitled to do. He just replied saying he doesn't want the trees cut right back as they give privacy to Mel (the tenant) and he thinks they look quite nice and that he'll come over next week to have a look. Well; they afford no more privacy to Mel than they do for me because the side they're on I have only my kitchen window and she has a small passage window and people can't really look into them anyway because of the angles of the houses. The fact is that the trees are totally beyond the height they should be (they're usually hedging plants ) and he just doesn't want to spend any money that he can get away with not spending. So I'm not touching them until he can see how bad it is in person

Poor Mel is a bundle of nerves and so stressed about this

Sigh....

They are horrible things if not kept properly, along with Leylandii. My little old lady has about 5m of them along her driveway but on the next door's land and they were tall. Problem.

She begged and pleaded with him for years to do something but he wasn't interested so she eventually took matters into her own hands. Martin, her gardener, was instructed to lop them off to 2m and also anything that was overhanging the vertical of her boundary line. He was then to chuck all the trimmings over the remaining hedge onto the neighbours land. She then sent him the bills for the work accompanied by a solicitor's letter (her daughter) telling him not to reoffend. She never expected the bills to get paid, and they never were, she was just making a point. After about three goes he eventually had work done on them and a fence was erected on her side of his boundary to keep them in check - she happily gave permission for the landscapers to come in.

It was extreme stuff, but apparently she was within her rights.

Ria, I am not for one moment suggesting that you should go the same way but there are ways, legal ones, to make him behave. Inform the council and get them involved, if necessary. This is the way to go where all other reasonable courses of action have failed.

He just doesn't want to spend any money!