should I have to do my neighbours garden

I can't stand people who are obsessive about their gardens and have to have everything in its place, preferably weed free.

I have a neighbour like that. I honestly think she has OCD.
We have a lovely grape vine growing over the front of our house, and in summer it is rampant, so we have to be careful and clip it back every week in summer to keep it undue control. They have made it quite clear they don't want it over their side.
We even have Greek ladies come and pick the leaves with our permission of course.
They use them in Greek dishes. I love that they do that.

I wouldn't say no to a bit of help though with my unruly garden.

It's your garden. Let's say you fix it to her standards. What if she then decides she thinks you should paint your front door or change your fence etc

Oh Dear me. I had a similar problem many years ago. I had a very narrow strip of ground by the side of the bungalow that I owned at that time. It had a few small shrubs, and one year, during the spring/summer, several very pretty wild flowers ie: ox eye daisies, poppies etc grew amongst them. As these flowers attracted the bees and butterflies, I let them thrive. I came home one day from work to find that everything, including my lovely little shrubs had been completely hacked to the ground. I could not believe my eyes. I visited my next door neighbour to see if she had seen the culprit.
Yes, and she knew who it was. It was her gardener, and SHE had instructed him to do it as she did not want any weeds getting into her garden even though there was a fence between our properties !!!!!!
To make matters even worse, she took great delight in telling me this. She was positively gleeful and laughed in my face.
She wasn't laughing though when she received a letter from my Solicitor.
Trespassing on private property, criminal damage etc, with my photographic evidence.
I did not want to take it any further at this time and told the Solicitor so.
His letter mentioned this, but he also added that should anything like this happen again, then it would be taken further.
I never had another problem.
A neighbour can only tackle trees, plants, weeds, that grow over or under the boundary fence. They can cut them back up to that boundary and no further. They cannot encroach on any land that is yours unless of course you permit them too.

Etheltbags, the bee thing is the bumblebee conservation trust which the BBC had featured as an appeal. When I saw it I joined. It costs £20 a year and you get a pack with poster, booklets, badge, wildflower seeds and lots if advice on how to encourage bees into your garden. I already have lots if bees as I have foxgloves and other bee friendly plants. They do bee walks and stuff like that too.

We have foxgloves and the bees enjoy the hardy geraniums but I would like more bees.

My neighbour grows bamboo - a very invasive kind. He's a youngish, single man, pleasant and friendly and not much interested in gardening - I love my garden but trying to stop the stuff coming into my borders is darned hard work! I have now resorted to glyphosate weed killer on the shoots that push through, painstaking stuff, to add insult to injury his Staghorn tree sends out runners into my borders. Not sure how long I can keep fighting the stuff before I'm lost in a forest of bamboo and never seen again!

I have a couple of lavatera which I let grow wild whilst they're flowering because the bees love them and there are so many flowers. When they've finished I trim them back and then in autumn cut them back hard.

Could you not pot up the stag horn runners and give them to friends?I would love a stag horn sumac.[hopeful] There is one over the road down the hill from me but it won't cross the road .

The bee count is being run by countryfile. I had to take film because I could not count them.
In answer to "what is a proper garden" I think it is whatever suits the gardener, providing it doesn't encroach on neighbours who have their own idea on what kind of garden suits them.

My neighbour is still ranting, she mutters to herself as she cuts everything she can reach that is even slightly poking over her fence. I'm sure she has OCD. I've not cut the gross for three weeks due to rain,my DGD loves running in the longrass and my sour faced neighbour just scowl over the fence.

Sorry my typing is not good on last mssg., I'm using a new tablet and its difficult to use such a fiddly keyboard

Molly10 what a lovely neighbour to have.

It's your grass and if your DGD loves it then leave it. The neighbour can be as sour faced as she likes. At the end of the day it's your land and there is nothing she can do about it. Why not seed some wild flowers into your grass and turn it into a meadow? You will get the pleasure of flowers without the hassle of too much work.

Neighbour has not spoken to me for the last few weeks, how petty to have ended a friendship of over 20 years, we have always been friendly,I've had her grandchildren for sleepovers when my DD was small and I went in, holding my breath when smoke was pouring out of her kitchen door but she had put out the fire and refused to come out. We've had chats in the garden regularly and now she's blanking me all because of a few weeds that have escaped into her garden. Anyone else had this problem.

My neighbour hacks back everything that dares show it's face. At the moment there is a rosa Mundi and a late clematis spilling into her garden. It looks glorious and oddly enough she is not having it hacked back.

One side we have a man who openly states that he "hates gardening with a vengeance" and on the other side I think he is simply lazy. One has a sick wife and the other has a wife full time working so I don't include them as they clearly cannot do the gardens. We sort of have a dialogue, one side saw me trying to clear the huge amount of ivy that had grown over our fence and a couple of years later killed off about a third. The other side acknowledged that the fence was in a terrible state and I thought he intended to replace it but he simply patched it up with bits and pieces.

What can I do? Nothing, we get on well enough although don't see much of each other so I sometime yank out some ivy and often go round with the weed killer you spread straight onto the leaves of other weeds growing through. They are who they are and I just get on with it. There are too many serious things in life than to be petty about next door's lack of garden care.

Sitting on the fence here LOL You say your neighbour isn't speaking to you because of a few weeds which is silly and not worth worrying about, but why are you bothered about her trimming, cutting, chopping anything encroaching her garden she's not coming round with a hacksaw and spoiling your garden she surely has every right to neaten her side if that's what she wants. I didn't see anything in your post that says she was telling you what to do in your garden only what she obviously wants in hers I don't see the problem and of course if she has mentioned she hates trees / bushes etc Again that's just her grumbling so take it with a pinch of salt and carry enjoying you side ...I d deal with any sour faces with a smile hard to keep sour then.
I will add that ivy is a particularly awful encroacher and I hate the stuff it grows like the clappers

Ethelbags
I cannot see what she has done wrong if she hasn't trespassed in your garden. I cannot imagine how big your garden must be to have 30 trees unless they are miniture ones.
My neighbour one side has 6 big trees,higher than the house they were all planted on the border either side of his top lawn, so the neighbours each side, I am one, have our garden perpetually in shade, where nothing will grow. He refuses to have any pruning done. My late husband used to keep our side manageable, but it is a nightmare now, in the winter I have 10 to 12 bags of leaves a week, to take to the tip in my little car, I could cry thinking about it. No tree surgeon can do anything for me because the neighbour refuses point blank to have no one touch his trees or go in his garden, they can do nothing without access to his. At the front dividing his house and the one attached to it he has conifers higher than the house, which lets nothing grow on the front and every now and then bring the telephone lines down. He has conifers up to

whole of the garden between mine and his, which I have to pay to be kept to 6 feet.
Apart from taking him to court I am a slave to his wild way of letting nature take over. Fortunately I have a garden where I can have the bottom 2/3rds how I would like it.my other neighbour is just lazy, her lawns are now just a meadow of pretty flowers, weeds to the rest of us, but apart fron me digging out the weeds that come through luckily I can put up with it. Her borders just weeds, but she never goes out there,mno washing is ever put and I don't think she ever looks at it.
I think we all have a right to have our gardens the way we like them, I love mine and spend hours in it, but it is spoilt somewhat by my selfish neighbour and I am looking to move.

Sitting on teh fence too- without seeing the reality, difficult to comment. But the title of the thread is really not accurate- your neighbour has not asked you to do their gardening, have they?

My best friend in the UK has shambolic garden- loved by wildlife of course, as she rarely goes to the end (long garden at 1940s semi)- but truly I wouldn't like to be her next door neighbour from that point of view. I always do weeding early in the year, as we all know, 1 weed in time saves 1000 (lots of catching up to do next year- as I was not able to this year due to knee replacement)- and it must be really annoying to do all the hard work then see next doors weed seed blowing across all Summer- knowing it will be even harder work to eradicate.

And yes, I am a tree worshipper- and yet, if my neighbour's 30 trees meant I could not enjoy any sun nor plant anything that has a chance to survive- this would be a deal breaker for me. And unfortunately would make the house very difficult to sell too- so I get where s/he is coming from, I'm afraid.

BTW were the trees there and not much smaller when they bought the house or did they get much taller since they moved in?

We had a paddock next to us in the UK- and the neighbours sold to a builder. We managed to put a limit to the size of the house built next to our bottom garden - and insist it was a bungalow, with a covenant stopping them enlarging or putting in dormer windows etc. But it was built very close to our 1920s mixed tall hedge- beech, elder, lilac, berberis, mock orange, etc. As soon as they moved in they started to complain about said hedge, which was kept well maintained but at about 3m high. We told them the hedge was there when they first saw the house, when they visited second and third time and when they signed the contract. They reply - we bought that bungalow because it was substantially cheaper than the others. Our reply 'yes, and that was for a reason!' We were very friendly and welcoming- but I'm afraid it didn't last long as they became abusive and unpleasant. We even got a phone call saying we had to go over and get our slugs and snails out of their garden! We did ask for proof of ownership first.

I dont think I sould be responsible for what goes through/under or over the fence. All plants will invade and mine are pretty, a budlea/ hebe and an ivy all got hacked down, I realise the ivy might have been a pest as it was up her wall but I like it and it looks pretty, the hebe and budlea are flowering now and would hav elooked so nice in her garden.
Neighbours garden is lawn with bare border and 2 roses at long intervals(boring). Monty Don says you should never see the bare soil and he would have to look hard to see any iin my garden

I have a weird neighbour on one side - she once invaded my garden complaining that the water from my hose had gone on her gravel - with a beautifully neat garden, and lovely neighbours on the other side whose plants (?) grow through my fence. I just trim the bit off that grow through from the lovely neighbours; the plants are all self seeded and a little trim will never be noticed and ignore Mrs neat and tidy but horrid. Being a good neighbour is one of the most difficult relationships

You aren't responsible for your invading plants that have gone through to the other side Ethelbags that's why your neighbour has taken to cutting down her own side but you don't like that either She can't win can she? it's none of anyone's business if she wants bare borders either not even Monty Dons

Your opening posts says Should I have to do my neighbours garden so the answer is NO and it doesn't look as if anyone is asking you to I don't get what the problem is I really don't

It's worth bearing in mind that if renting, it might be in the contract that the garden must not be allowed to become a nuisance to neighbours.

the neighbour is complaining that I dont stopthe plants growing in her plot but you cant stop them only cut them back now and again. I have bought a bottle of weedkiller (against the grain as I hate to think the birds and wildlife could be affected), Ive paid a gardener to trim her side of the hedge as I do every autumn.Unless you are weeding every day they will sneak through.