He was pulling up my pyracantha!

Reporting it to the police gives you a crime reference number and a log of the crime.
It may or may not necessitate police action.

If he does anything else film him with your phone. The police should be able to act as you witnessed the damage yourself. If the neighbours live in a council property report them to the council also.

Gabriella, if I thought I might need to pursue any sort of civil action for damages, I would find my case strengthened by having reported it to the local community policing team.

I would absolutely not advise anyone make an urgent or emergency call for property damage unless their own safety was being threatened.

In the unlikely and unfortunate circumstance that there is a course of conduct here which amounts to harassment of luzdoh, reporting each incident to the community team is pretty much essential to be able to proceed seriously in law.

The community teams exist for exactly this kind of difficult but non urgent dispute.

I would have thought they could have sent a PCSO rather than two detectives.

GabriellaG I think this is not a single incident so those advocating calling the police are not necessarily, as you call it, timewasters.

Those GNers who advocate calling the police are timewasters. Fgs, calling police over a plant and fence? Whatever next. Are you regularly up in arms about knife crime, moped robberies, unsolved or improperly investigated murders? Which is more important?
I suggest sending your neighbour a 'signed for' letter detailing your complaint and requesting the fence be mended. Give a set time frame for a response, say...7 working days.
Take photos of the damage and note the time and day it happened.
It would, no doubt, be a civil case.

Stansgran I know why it says squeaking but I don't know how to tell you! I wrote it in the everyday agism forum. It doesn't belong here but, well.. here it is;
My little 7 yr old neighbour has guinea-pigs. I adore guinea pigs. A few days ago, a very loud guinea-pig speaking noise was coming apparently from under my kitchen sink cupboards. I made the dogs go out of the room and got down on my stomach on the floor - very awkward as I am disabled - and squeaked back and called and looked....
Then I remembered. I changed my mobile's ring-tone. I changed my ring-tone to that of a guinea-pig squeaking.

Elrel Thanks! Yes all the neighbours are really lovely. Some are not very well so I'm not bothering them.

Stansgran Crumbs! What a wierdo! A real example of someone to whom the kids would say; "Get a life!" Sad though.

You, however, are a very clever lady! And funnily enough, I have plans for that fence and garden area of mine which involve clematis montana! squeaking.

Guineagirl I totally agree:
"Some neighbours are pure controlling bullies" …I was so upset to read about the blackbirds. This aggressive man also cut out lots of birds' nests from the ivy on their side. He said he was doing it "Because they're getting married you know". Yet their garden is not in particularly good condition and they haven't a clue about gardening, not that they should, but it doesn't give them any right to dictate to me! I have a fortnightly gardener, as I'm disabled, mainly to cut the grass, and he keeps my garden beautifully tidy while I plant my flowers and odd bits of veg and salad.

My Pyracantha is quite spread out in its growth, more like a tree. We live on a hill. I am down hill from the evil neighbours. I didn't keep trimming the pyracantha like a hedge but let it grow upwards and spread sideways. It was easy for him to reach the trunk of the plant because it is not a tightly compact bush but more tree-like. It is approx. 15 years old though! I wanted it for the colour and to feed the birds.

grannyqueenie Thank you! That is so kind of you. I fear my greatest problem is the mad woman next door. I am unashamedly letting off steam and not using professional language here! She has behaved despicably! It really is amazing how dreadful some people are! I suppose for me it's the shock of being personally attacked in y own home and her being permanently near, her lies! Oh how wicked and cruel! But then the second instalment I haven't yet narrated, which was Psychiatric text-book manipulative behaviour!

I'm very lucky in some ways. I had a desperately unhappy marriage throughout which I used my Teaching qualification as best I could. Then I did the Psychology degree expecting to become an Educational Psych. But I went into the Biological bases of behaviour side of Psychology. I studied and did research at the Institute of Psychiatry, on Autism and had to learn to observe and recognise many disorders. Then I studied at the Institute of Neurology. So I was really lucky to have this all-round view of behaviour, Psychiatric and Neurological. However, someone drove at 120 mph into the back of my car when I had slowed down to 50mph and the impact messed up my spine. Since then I've had a lot of pain and limited walking and unable to do a lot of things. I can't work in a hospital as they are so big to get around and I have too much pain anyway. I try to help charities in the academic way when they do research or need info. I'm not reliable enough to give regular help as I get really bad days and many migraines. But I am so grateful to the learning I had from the two Institutes.

What a horrible situation you’re in luzdoh all I can say is that, if you did not have the amount of professional know how and insight from your working life it would be even harder to manage it all.
You did the right thing contacting the police even although it sounds like they didn’t really understand the full impact of it all. I’m guessing that’s probably because it didn’t quite fit in any of the tidy tick boxes that everyone seems to use these days to assess a situation. Unfortunately where human beings are concerned, and particularly those displaying bizarre behaviour, one size certainly doesn’t fit all.
Sending you good wishes as you continue to manage this tricky situation.

Actually, I've been too dismissive re our Police, sorry! They are extremely over-worked in my area, and I hadn't been beaten up although I still feel intimidated, and they did come to me because I'm old and disabled. So I shouldn't be flippant about them. They have to do such horrendous things as I know, having been a victim twice. So I ought to respect them and really I do!

sarahellenwhitney and everybody You are all WONDERFUL! thank you so much.

I did report to the Police but that was after his second incident a few days later that week- breaking my gate, coming into my garden and shouting the odds, plus my going to his daughter and her intended who live in the house next door and the daughter proceeded to shout abuse at me with sarcasm and tell the most monstrous lies and make threats to make holes in my fence.

I keep my deeds at my Solicitor's so I phoned and asked her to read them out. She advised I reported it to the Police who should log it. It is my fence and it is very old. The father has pulled ivy off it which grows from their side and has killed trees, and in so doing has damaged the fence. I'm not that fazed about that as the fence is old, but I have told them I can't replace it this year and it is still serviceable. My pyracantha does not block their light, the light comes from their side anyway. It does not overhang their garden, unlike about four ugly weed-like plants that come into my garden from theirs.

The problem is, the father has been treated for cancer in 2 places and the daughter told me, some months ago (February?) he had stopped treatment because the 2 Consultants "could not decide who was going to operate first". I am a retired Neuropsychologist. I had a colleague who had a case where a man stopped his treatment and stopped scans, developed a secondary brain tumour and killed another young man in a car crash. The other possibility for brain-behaviour involvement in cancer could be use of steroids. With this in mind, I had not called the Police about the father.

I had gone to the neighbours that evening. He has a very adult daughter who is an Accountant at the large hospital nearby, and very self-confident. I went to ask, gently, if her dad was having check-ups. Her first words, because her Intended came to the door, shouted over his head and before I could begin, were, "I've dealt with that, it's all sorted. I've been on the phone to dad, that's all sorted. You can go." I did note she did not say "I'm sorry dad broke your gate." Her father said he'd mend the gate by putting a bit of extra wood on it behind where the bolt slides in, that wasn't there before, saying how badly made it was and being so rude about everything demanding a hammer etc.. I did not want her father on my premises or to do a shambolic job on my gate which was made by a qualified Carpenter. When talking to his daughter and her intended, I was extremely polite and tactful and played down her father's aggressive behaviour and his kicking the gate and shouting abuse. In fact I went into my old professional mode. I did not mention any possibilities of brain involvement until much later on when she was saying her father never shouts and was insisting he is gentle and peaceful. Actually I have heard him shouting twice before, over a year or more ago. She was furious with me for insisting on talking about the incidents and attacked me verbally saying horrendous and untruthful things about me. In fact, she flew into a rage just like her father. I would say, I have seen this in the clinic and more often we hear about it, as we say "from the victims of these people" who all share a cluster of personality disorders with overlapping symptoms and include aggressiveness, including passive aggression, bullying, lying, violent temper outbursts, sarcasm, belittling people, manipulativeness etc.
It was horrendous!
As people who worked with brain-injured people, we were told that, having the benefit of our knowledge, should we ever suspect a brain event underlying a person's behaviour, we have a duty to make that person safe and hence other people safe because that person might, like the person I mentioned before, drive a car, or hurt others somehow or be responsible for children etc. This duty doesn't stop because we retire. So my duty was to try and see that he went to a doctor and somehow was assessed, preferably with a brain scan. That would have been done anyway if he were going routinely to the hospital and I was praying that he was, yet under the impression that he had walked out.
Next, the Police. Yep, useless. Two turned up, detectives or else they can't afford uniforms. Didn't show me their ID! Listened but couldn't follow my explanation. My bit about fears about his brain and cancer threw them. Then the older one, who was minding the young girl said, "What would you like us to do?" They would have gone to see the neighbours but they were out at work. They said they would "Log it". He, older Plod, said I should write to neighbours explaining the facts since she had told a lot of lies especially about the fence. I said I'd done a preparatory letter. He read it and said it was good, very unprovocative, factual etc.
There is another instalment I will give later (can't keep writing...)
Thank you so much everyone!
P.S, My clinical feeling is that the cancer and brain involvement are less likely to have been the influence of his behaviour (he was so fit and well and energetic) and the cause for such aggression was most likely that he is an aggressive nasty man who thinks he can make people do whatever he says!

Have a quiet word with the police. It's no use dismissing them out of hand, it all depends which police area you live in as to whether they come out or not. If you explain to them that it frightened you and you feel a bit threatened(which is a criminal offence) they should be able to have a word with your neighbours. At least if you report it, it will have to be logged.

How frightening luzdoh

I am not sure that the police would do anything either - but you could try. At least take some photos of the damage.

I hope it scratched him, lethal stuff. We did plant some years ago in the back hedge because someone was taking a short cut through our garden! It proved so difficult to chop back and so prickly we got rid of it in the end.

We had a neighbour who liked to keep a space in OUR hedge so they could see who was calling at our front door. I kept putting shrubs in and finding them dead or dug up and caught him in the act one day. He told me he liked to see who was visiting. They once moved a garden seat so they had a view of our garden from the slope above. Perfectly entitled to but I put in a trellis and a clematis montana

Speak to Citizen's Advice. I think a strongly worded letter from a solicitor might stop them. CAB can advise of a cheap solution.

Seriously, if this is an older man, thenhe may have dementia of some kind. We had a similar issue with an older neighbour.

Mind you it’s been a long time
since anyone pulled up my pyracantha LOL

Sounds like he might have some sort of dementia. No-one in their right mind grabs hold of pyracantha!!!!

He sounds crazy for several reasons tbh. even one thorn from a pyracantha can do some serious damage and is damn painful so grabbing the entire bush and yanking about requires full body protection for any normal person. Also you say he damaged the fence as well and yet I'm guessing he's never mentioned the shrub being a problem or you wouldn't have been so shocked by his actions. Yes we all know we need to try and live harmoniously with our neighbours but his way is not the way to go about it and surely he can't be expecting a cheery response to his actions. Is the shrub particularly large? I know I have one growing through two trees and it's as tall as the trees. Their are no height restrictions for trees and shrubs. I don't think you did handle it badly tbh although the best response would have been to grab your phone and record his actions. I do think you should contact the Police even if it's only to ask for advice. Although I think they should speak to him to see what his issue is.

Guineagirl
Did you take photographs or keep the remains of the nest and report him, age is not an excuse, to the RSPB or the RSPCA or both .?

What a stupid thing to do for him to do. As a pyracantha has loads of vicious thorns he probably cut himself and bled for his trouble. I wonder if he felt that it was a danger to his father and that's why he did it.
That's no excuse though, is it? If he felt that it encroached on his land he could and should have asked if he could trim off the offending branches. That's the trouble with people who aren't nice - they don't bother to ask nicely.

I sympathise luzdoh! My neighbour decided to 'prune' the clematis montana that covers the trellis between our gardens. It's our plant & we always trim the top & make sure their side is kept tidy. He sawed through a lot of the thick stems leaving the shrub at our side hanging off the trellis & decimated in parts! So annoying - I was really upset. This is the same neighbour who thought it was a good idea to begin assembling bedroom furniture at 11pm!

luzdoh For what reason would they do this other than they resented it hanging over their side.Nevertheless it is not acceptable for others to damage what you claim to be your fence as this is a criminal offence..Take photographs and as the local law did not appear to want to get involved go to CA show them photographs and ask what you can do about it. It would be wise to have cctv installed to keep an eye on these persons and gives evidence should there be further damage to what you claim is your property. If the fence and trellis can be proved to be yours, in my view believe it to be your property, then I strongly advise you obtain evidence of this then damage to it caused by others is criminal. Was this fence , together with the trellis and shrub. blocking out your neighbours light?.The right to a view is old hat so that would not stand up in court. neither is the fact 'they /we don't like it'..How ever if your shrub is hanging over the fence and trellis onto your neighbours side? then you have a duty to keep it trimmed to prevent it happening again.You live next to these people but that does not mean you have to be bosom pals. If its just a matter of keeping your shrub to a reasonable height, reasonable to the extent and as the law states does not interfere with your neighbours enjoyment of their property then that is a small price to pay for harmony. Sorry if you went to sleep half way. Nothing worse though than neighbours like yours Good Luck.

It sounds a very aggressive action. Pyracantha are very prickly. I hope he got what he deserved!

What on earth! was this plant troubling the neighbours? why didnt he just call on you if there was a problem, or if they wanted it taken out of the ground he could have asked.I hope the police sort it out for you.
I hope the plant survives!