Lawns overshadowed by neighbouring trees

I used to have a tree in my garden. I didn't realise it caused substantial shadow in my neighbour's garden. They came round and we discussed it. They knew a tree surgeon and we agreed to share the cost of cutting it down. The tree surgeon agreed it was a lovely tree but in the wrong place. I have a bit more space in my small garden and my neighbours have the sun they wanted. If you can talk to your neihbours they may be willing to help.

I do sympathise! We had a lovely hedge at the end of our garden but the man who lived behind us moved & the new people never cut it. Jump forward 15 years & we now have HUGE fir trees there- at least 40' high & that sway in the wind to an alarming extent. Our vegetable garden was at the end of the garden & I grew everything you can think of as well as soft fruit. Now it is a barren waste as it gets no sun or moisture.
Some of the trees started to lean alarmingly & we got him to get a tree surgeon in to remove 2 of them but the others are just as bad. He says he cannot afford to get any more cut & keeps saying they will be moving soon anyway. My next door neighbour is on his case too but we are just hoping they DO move soon.
I should add that these trees cannot be seen from his house as he has an L shaped garden with the foot of the L being the bit behind us & it is only grass (which is never cut of course).

Sparkling, apologies if I came across as unsympathetic. I should have said that people can grow what they like 'within reason'.

I've had problems too. I had one beautiful tree removed as my new neighbours objected to it's leaves on their lawn - although it was 60 feet away and only sent leaves their way in windy conditions. That cost me £520 as they made no contribution. I wouldn't do it again.

I have over 100 feet of a neighbour's Leylandii hedge to trim every year (up a ladder, in my old age) which I truly resent.

Leaf litter is only really a nuisance on lawns, though. Depending on wind direction, I get next door's (either direction) and they get mine. I gather it up with the leaf blower (which shreds in reverse) and put it in the compost bins.

I was delighted that most of the pink cherry blossom went away from my garden this year, for once!

My neighbour had two trees next to our shared fence, casting a heavy shade onto my garden. After pleasant but failed 'negotiations', I decided I'd had enough.

I collected all the fallen bits from their trees and piled everything into my garden incinerator. I'd set light to it when they were enjoying their sun-filled garden. After a couple of these bonfires, they popped their heads over the fence to ask me why I couldn't wait until dusk to have the bonfire. I told them that I was only burning what was from their trees in my garden and that, if they wanted to, they could come over and collect all the bits from their trees and dispose of it themselves at dusk if they so wished. They didn't, so I continued with my bonfires. However, they did get the hint and the following year one tree was removed and the other cut down to a more sensible size.

I love trees but not when they are planted close to fences impacting on neighbours' gardens instead of their own.

If you have problems with Leylandi hedges, or any other evergreen, check the High Hedges government legislation introduced in the 1980’s as part of the anti social behaviour act to combat this very problem. My neighbour and I used this very successfully after the builder of our bungalows had failed to get any co-operation from the owner of the adjoining land, where the border was a very long line of very, very high 30 year old Leylandi. The Builder had offered to reduce the trees to a reasonable height but the owner tried to get all sorts of “monetary compensation” deals so the builder just walked away knowing that we, as owner/residents would be able to get the local council to intervene on our behalf, which they did. We had to pay an administration fee of £150 each, And this vary over the country, but it was so worth it. The trees were reduced to just three meters high at the owners cost!

I’m surprised that you can grow ferns under trees, as the trees take most of the moisture from the ground.

Trees are beautiful and are so easily destroyed by people wanting them gone. Live with them not against them.

@Hetty58 I totally agree with you about cutting your neighbours trees. It’s really not fair to expect you to do that and I suppose you have to get rid of the rubbish too as your neighbours have probably declined the trimmings. I feel so cross on your behalf.
My neighbours eucalyptus sheds leaves all year round and ruined my pond. The leaves are toxic and they killed all the fish.

Bluesmum, here, it costs £500 just to get the local council to come out and investigate, with no guarantee of success. It's my plan B - for when I can't manage the pruning any longer.

Yes trees are beautiful and should not be cut down indiscriminately
The right tree in the right place. A huge parkland tree has no place in a small residential garden I think some folks don’t do enough research when planting trees for privacy in gardens.

We didnt like been overlooked so we put a high fence up .They than had their garden higher so we are still overlooked by them.They now have to go to their bedrooms instead of standing i garden
They also have no curtains or blinds up.They wsnted us to cut down our two trees at the bottom of garden i refused would have like more so not exposed
We are going to move but untill than anyone any idea what i can do about these weird people

Well my back garden was in a mess and the neighbours wanted to cut down a couple of my small trees. I feel stupid for agreeing although I'm holding onto the positive that this has given me motivation to work hard to get it useable again as I now have the time.
I had to row with the uncle to actually take the trees away, if you want to cut them down you take them away! And they have cut more than they needed too. So need roots removed or turned into something then I want something high and leafy so the wind will blow leaves onto there decking.

Have the trees just appeared? Were they there when you moved in or have they grown since. If grown since you may have justification for having then trimmed down eg overhanging branches and if dense planting then thinned out. You have obviously approached someone as "they" have refused. Have you contacted Council as they can often determine if trees are a nuisance. Only options I know of would be astroturf, some hard paving with shrubbery to soften the look, summerhouse perhaps. Lawn and shade needs an awful lot of attention, can understand your woes.

There is a high hedge law. Two or more trees can be denoted as a hedge. It’s costly , but I applied to the council for neighbors trees to be halved in size and kept that height. And I won.
Worth approaching the council on this. And mine was private property not council owned

Houndi, how about a sail shade? I have a pop up pergola (not so easy to pop up single handed) for some privacy from next door (higher than mine and made higher still with decking) but I'm considering a massive sail left up all summer. They are forever watching me - very weird behaviour!

The huge garden over our bottom fence has a protected Corsican Pine and the branches are like an umbrella over our considerably smaller garden. DH fills bag upon bag with pine needles off our lawn. It is no longer an attractive tree but the owner refuses to sort it. We did get permission a year or two ago to trim what overhung our property. The wife watched the tree surgeon from start to finish and said she would sue "if you come one centimetre over our side". Incidentally they have had a steady stream of visitors during lockdown ! But I digress. The tree is so tall now that if it fell towards us there would be no house and no us.

Being realistic I think all you can do is have a talk with them...would they be able to reduce down, or remove...maybe you can pay or split the cost...if not, you can cut your side so it doesn’t hang over as much. This may look unsightly at first but a tree surgeon could advise. The mess from any tree is usually there at some time or another(leaf ‘hoovers’ could make it a bit easier)...but if you could reconfigure things it might help. Failing all that, move....but in my experience, the problem comes up repeatedly.?

If you have spoken to your neighbours and they refuse to cut down or trim their trees, no one seems think there is anything you can do.

However, it might be worthwhile trying to find out whether there are any bye-laws that address the problem.

The only thing I can think of that you can do with two lawns that are too labour intensive, is to have them ploughed up and paving put down instead.

I would do so in our front garden if only I could afford to.

I find this very interesting because I have a neighbour with huge trees. My house is all cracks and I am told has had a lot of movement. I suspected the trees but it looks like some of you have actually had this proved. How did you go about getting proof that the trees were the cause of problems?

We have several gardens around us with huge trees growing in them. Our next door but one Neighbour has four Conifer type tree's in a row which this year have blocked our evening sun. Once the birds nesting in them have gone, I will ask him to cut them back to an acceptable height. Our bigger problem is the trees growing along the pathway at the back of our house. This is Council owned and the tree's are just left to grow and grow year after year. We used to have beautiful views when we first moved here 13 year ago but now, sadly, most of that has gone.

The bottom of our garden is overshadowed by some enormous trees from our neighbours. By late afternoon the garden is completely in shade. I do believe there should be a law to prevent people planting large trees in suburban gardens.

That’s what I did Bikergran.... have a south facing garden and neighbours that for 20 years refused to do anything about their 15 foot privet hedge ..... it covered in shade half our garden and really spoilt the garden. Then they sold up....and the new neighbours proposed a large extension , to which we objected too. To no avail, it was built. But they then rooted up this awful hedge and replaced it with a five feet fence. The lawn that was ruined by the hedge recovered to a beautiful lush green , and I’m able to utilise the ‘virgin’ soil and planted a honeysuckle against the fence with dramatic results . In two years it’s six foot high and covers the whole ‘blankness’ of a wooden fence. I do miss the birds that nested in hedge though. If only they’d just cut the hedge to a normal size, we could’ve had best of both worlds.

I had a similar situation with 3 colossal oak trees each with a tree preservation order on. After too many years of trying to get the lawns looking good, I finally gave up last year and have had stone put down and an enormous raised bed. This is its first year but already it looks fabulous compared to the tatty lawns. I wish I’d done it before.

I am not sure about the law regarding the height of trees if indeed there is one, and some may have TPOs, but I think you will find that there are laws about the height of a hedge. It may well be that these are bye-laws, but do check. I have always understood the specified height of a fence is 7 feet and that of a hedge 9 feet and, of course, as with any other tree which overhangs your fence you have the right to cut back the branches.

I would add that I quite envy those who have only overgrown trees to contend with. My rather unpleasant neighbour put up one of those hideous -in my opinion - metal fences which look just like corrugated iron which has been painted a nasty shade of green and are apparently guaranteed to last for 20 years. In the summer it becomes too hot to put your hand on, and sitting in front of it on my patio was like having a radiator at your back. My solution was to have a wooden fence erected on my land to hide the horrible thing, quite expensive but worth it. Ah well, everyone to their own taste!

We had to have a Leylandii hedge cut down when we moved in to this house 16 years ago. It was about 15 feet tall and shaded most of garden in the afternoon. The problem with leylandii is that it is a manufactured tree and as such nobody knows how tall it will grow if left to itself. My nasty stepfather had a problem with his neighbours large tree growing very close to his garden fence. He asked the neighbour to cut it down or at least trim it. The neighbour did not want to do it. So my nasty stepfather got some Jeyes fluid and surreptitiously watered it for some days. After a while the poor tree turned brown and died. I do not recommend this.

Our garden backs onto allotments. All the back gardens on our side of the road are lined with beautiful big oaks, about 6 of them. Thankfully we have long gardens but beautiful as they are the oaks suck all the moisture out of the ground and autumn means a mass of leaves. I have planted shade loving plants down that end which thrive and there is an old sloe bush that is good for my gin. The biggest pain is that I have to make sure I keep that end constantly watered. Having said that the trees I am living with have been there hundreds of years I would be a, bit miffed if neighbours had planted trees that were shading my garden. So if you have to live with the shade it may well be that you go with the flow and have shade living plants or some sort of chippings. Good luck.